The Leak

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Oil gushes from the platform, spilling into the bay.
Crews are hard at work, rescuing oil-soaked birds and animals.
Other crews are using sonic nets to drive sea life out of the area to safety.
Merfolk aren’t happy that drilling platform is leaking into their kingdom, and their ambassador angrily points to the contract where the humans would guarantee safety and a portion of the revenues, acting quickly to resolve any spills or accidents.
We are not acting quickly enough, he says. Poseidon will call up more hurricanes if we don’t work faster.
The president scowls and gives the order.

The War On Soup

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It is important to get to the front of the soup line as early as possible.
When the soup is running out, they roll the soup-drum into the kitchen and add water to fill it back up again.
No meat.
No vegetables.
No stock.
I know this to be true, because I worked in the soup kitchen for a year.
Until they threw me out for complaining that we were starving the people.
“If they starve, they should never have been born!” yelled the director.
“Without the born, we would have no meat!” I growled.
Happy now?
Finish your soup.

Weekly Challenge #211 – Bill

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Welcome to the Weekly Challenge Number Two Hundred and Eleven, 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 Bill!
VOTING

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

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

Jeffrey

When the bill came it was astounding. To be sure I expected it to be high, after all we had a full seven course meal, that included lobster in three of the courses. The problem was how high.
“Sir, is there a problem with your bill?”
the waiter had formed the words as a question but you could tell what he was thinking. He had a right, I had been staring at it for almost an hour now, but it was the gun he was holding that caught my attention.
“Now will you be paying with cash or with blood?”

Steven

The aliens look like cartoon ducks, but I think they’re kind of sexy.
Besides, they like poetry. Which is how I, a grad student, ended up
interviewing one of them.
I called him by hyperwave. His name was a musical throat-swallowing
gargle of a sound. He said “Call me Bill.” We talked until the late
hours of the morning. And every day for a month.
I owe the hyperwave company more than my student loans. I got a huge
bill for talking to an alien named Bill, who has a bill.
He thought it was poetic.
I changed majors.

Guy

I sit in darkness. I keep the refrigerator door open, try to cool up the room, but to no avail. The ice melted long ago and no cool air is sipping out. There’s no food at the refrigerator. Haven’t been there in a long time. They’ve cut down the gas, then they switched off the electricity. Couldn’t afford the food anyway, pay for electricity, gas, or water. I hear them coming up the stairs, the guys from the execution office. They are here for the furniture. I light up a match, watch the fire dance, then let it consume me.

Zakmann

I found out I can pay many of my bills with a credit card and earn points. Too bad I can’t pay the mortgage with credit card, I could earn at least one book every month. Now all I have to figure out is how to pay the credit cards. I am glad my kids understand that I have to have money to pay everything we buy even if I use credit. Of course they still ask questions like “If prince William has a gaming system, is that a royal Wii?” and of course they ask “May I have Money?”

Justin

Heather scrolled through the list. They all matched the parameters she selected in the search options, but there were many other factors to be examined before choosing one.
Some were too tall or too wide. One had the right size, but obviously slow in processing speed. Another looked beautiful, just geared for work only. Eventually she found one just a bit taller than herself and he wanted kids. His name was William. She filled out the forms and sent the money to the mail order husbands site. She needed time to prepare, so she checked the ‘Bill me later’ option.

Norval Joe

“Bill?” He heard a womans voice. “Bill, is that you?”
Winston Carlson looked up from the cafe’s small round table.
He recognized the attractive woman who stood nearby. She rested one hand on her hip, with the other waved an accusatory finger.
“You’re not going to the reunion. Instead, your’re going to hide and watch everyone who goes into the restaurant,” she said and limped to his table.
“Look, Aileen, I don’t have freinds in there. And my names not Bill. The kids liked to make fun of my big upper lip.”
“I know,” she said, “my name is Marie.”

Stewart

Dear Bill, here is the bill for the bill replacement on your favorite
baseball cap. Next time please do not bill the other players before
playing as I’ve severed many bills from players’ caps just today. It
has become quite an issue. Also of note, my name, as you surely know,
is not Bill or Billy or Mac or Buddy, it is William. I would
appreciate it if you could call me by my given name. My parents spent
a long time deciding on it and it is very important to me. Sincerely,
William Williamson The Duckbill Platypus Sports Club

TJ

His new No.2 pencils rattled in their new red plastic box, complete with
sharpener and a compartment to catch the shavings. His new red jacket
kept out the September chill. A pair of sophomores walked past him,
laughing, and he quickly unbuttoned the top button on his shirt to match
theirs. A bell rang, and a pretty blonde girl smiled at him. “Hi!
I’m Christine,” she said. “You look lost. What’s your name?”
“Bill.” he said, smiling back. Bill sounded more grown up than
Billy. New year, new grown-up name. “I am kinda lost,” he said.
“Walk me to class?”

Forsooth, I’ve read your Dane’s yarn through and you’ve cobbled up
a pageantry of folly. This whole scene is witticisms and folderol. Why
not simply call the thing “Polonius”? And this bit, where he’s
contemplating suicide, shouldn’t that be tucked in with Claudius, or
Ophelia? Odds bodkins, she actually commits suicide. Or Polonius could
manage it with scarce another breath. It makes no sense! Here Hamlet’s
breathing fiery vengeance against his uncle and stepfather, but next
appears contemplating death by his own hand? If we’re looking for
madness mayhaps we ought first inquire with the playwright. What sayest
thou, Bill?

The avalanche moved three tons of ice and snow, and left Washington skier
Janet Winsome pinned beneath a fallen tree, stranding her helpless for
fully two days. She was unconscious when the rescue helicopters finally
spotted her, and it was another five hours to work out the logistics to
get at her and then to move her safely. Her face was pale and
frostbitten, and there was no saving her leg. But her sense of humor was
fine. On seeing the bill, she said, “Well … you’d best knock me
out again if you’re gonna get my arm as well.”

Planet Z

“Put it on my bill!” cackles Grampa.
Every time I saw him, he told the same old corny joke.
I’m supposed to laugh. So, I try.
Grampa punches me in the shoulder. “Good one, huh?”
“Yeah, Grampa,” I say. “Good one.”
Now, I’ve got grandkids, and I tried to tell them the same joke.
“Why doesn’t the duck tell them to put it on his credit card?” says Janey.
“Or use his Paypal?” says Bobby.
Kids these days don’t understand a good joke.
I tried to get them to pull my finger.
And I shit my pants.
Damn you, Grampa.

The Machine That Lied

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Robots are becoming more advanced every year.
For a while now, robots that witnessed crimes are required to testify in court as to what they saw and heard.
However, as artificial intelligence grew in speed and power, the robotic testimony diverged from human testimony more often.
New robots were developed that could sense whether a witness robot was telling the truth or lying, but as those became more intelligent, they also started to provide mixed results.
In brief: they were lying, too.
Pretty soon, you won’t trust anything a robot says or does, which matches the human-like skins they wear.

Death Cat

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The Deathcat wanders the nursing home hallways, poking his head into each doorway and sniffing the air.
He jumps up on a bed and curls against an old woman with tubes in her mouth, nose, and arms.
He knows that this woman will die.
Across the hall, another old woman points and laughs.
“Deathcat strikes again!” she cackles. “Have a nice trip, Sadie!”
The nurses have had to put up with her for over two years.
But not anymore.
They wait for her to fall asleep, and then sprinkle catnip on her bed.
Deathcat sniffs the air, following the scent.

Teleport

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Professor Blaine had proven that the teleporter worked on inanimate objects and living things many times, but the government had yet to give him approval to test it on humans.
So, one evening, he volunteered himself.
Every atom and quantum-state in his physical body were moved from the first scanner-pad to the second.
But the system failed to transport his soul.
When the professor read the letter from the Defense Department, commandeering his research for weapons research, instead of tossing it into the trash as he’d done to the first letter they’d sent, he shrugged and signed the transfer orders.

Cinco

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We prepare for Cinco de Mayo.
Putting boards over the windows, pulling the cars into the garage and locking it.
We don’t bother gardening in April anymore. It would just get torn up and thrown into our driveway or on the roof.
The press doesn’t call it rioting anymore. They keep saying it’s a peaceful demonstration. A parade.
Say that to our former neighbors, who watched their homes burn down.
We got lucky that year. Only the shed got hit.
The fence had new razor-wire on it.
Pull the gates shut, and load your shotgun.
And happy Cinco de Mayo.

The Werewolf

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Those damn cops had shot at us.
I lucked out, but the Werewolf didn’t.
The angry beast growls and licks his wounds, picking out bullets with his claws and tossing them into the gutter.
“They can’t kill me,” it says. “But it still fuckin’ hurts.”
I nod and watch the wounds.
The bleeding stops, and within a minute they’ve scarred over.
“Drowning is bad, but fire’s the worst.”
“Try taking a stake to your lung,” I say. “They don’t teach anatomy worth a damn anymore.”
He washes the blood off with the rain, and we head back down the alley.

Puppet Regime

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We watch the enemy’s soldiers march into the capital.
Buildings burn. The Resistance is crushed, strung up from the castle walls.
Not by their necks, but by their hands, feet, and joints.
It is one things to be forced to follow the command of a puppet regime, but being told to bow to a marionette regime is even more humiliating.
The old Prime Minister is pranced around the massive stage with a club in his hand.
“WHERE’S THE BABY?” shrieks the enemy from the battlements in his best Punch falsetto.
Fiendish monsters! We will prevail, and make hand-puppets of them.

Weekly Challenge #210 – Easy, Router, Water Under The Bridge, You Broke My Vase, Something Simple

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Welcome to the Weekly Challenge Number Two Hundred and Ten, 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 Easy, Router, Water Under The Bridge, You Broke My Vase, Something Simple!
VOTING

Which were the best stories this week?
Lewis
Zachmann
Guy David
Steven
TJ
Anima
Justin
Norval Joe
Arri
Planet Z
  
Free polls from Pollhost.com

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

Lewis

“You broke my vase!”
Bob the giant looked down at the screaming little person.
“Why can’t you do something so simple and easy?”
Bob scratched his head. Bob was not bright, but the folks tried to think of odd jobs he could do to make him feel like a part of the community.
The little person started to scream to himself.
“Water under the bridge,” she told me. “He did not mean it,” “it is not his fault.”
Bob pointed at a small pile of crushed electronics and the little person looked.
“What is that?” he asked.
Bob grinned.
“Router!”

Zachmann

I thought getting a wireless router for our board and care would be something simple. First I linked though the website to order router. After three weeks called cable company, who said they didn’t understand why it was not sent and reordered it. Two days later the caregiver called and told me the box had come then the online order not coming was water under the bridge. I arrived with my laptop expecting self installation to be easy. I put installation disk in laptop. Soon I called tech support. Since I’m twelve o’clock flasher hours later there was wireless internet.

Where ever I work, every night the regular staff always tell me ghost stories right before they leave me alone for the rest of the night. One place I worked, I always heard this weird eerie sound every day about three in the morning but soon found it to be the sound of the BART trains returning to station.
One night I heard a voice “I’ll kick your ass, you broke my vase. I’ll kick your ass, you broke my vase.” I shouted “Get off me case, I never touched your vase”. Later, I found a parrot forgotten by owner.

Guy David

They met under the bridge, at the place where the waters run. The meeting was easy to arrange. They used to send out couriers on horses with notes etched in the blood of virgin maidens, but those days all they needed was a modem, a router and an internet connection. Usually, they summoned the spirits through elaborate rituals conducted by the blue mages of Ingens Papilla, but this time it was something much simpler. All they needed to summon was one genie. The leader rubbed the lamp silently and the smoke started rising. “You broke my vase” said the genie.

Steven

Sanson knew it was wrong when he woke to snow on his eyelashes. His memories downloaded across the clone’s brain, restless after being stored in the ship’s routers during the interstellar flight.
Sanson followed sounds of hammering and laughing to the bridge, dodging snowdrifts along the way. The galaxy, stretched by hyperspace dilation, rippled like water beneath the transparent floor of the bridge. A bearded figure sat in the captain’s chair, supervising small aliens making strange toys.
“Have a seat,” it told Sanson with a laugh. “we have to speed up to make it to every house in one night!”

TJ

And it’s Easy, now, coming up close on the outside but can she catch Router no! Router pulls ahead leaving Water Under the Bridge neck and neck to place with You Broke My Vase, You Broke My Vase edging up on Router now ahead of Water Under the Bridge by a nose but what’s this? Something Simple, Something Simple an odds on favorite to lose now overtaking Easy, now passing Water Under the Bridge, passing You Broke My Vase, now coming up on Router, it’s neck and neck, Router and Something Simple, it’s neck and neck and Something Simple WINS!

Anima

It’s nuts how something simple like you breaking my vase years ago still makes me crazy. It ought to be water under the bridge, but it isn’t easy for me to forget that day. It wasn’t that it was a Ming, and it was nice that you vacuumed and cleaned up the mess: It’s that IT WAS MY MAMA! You were hooking up the router; I concede the vase was on the corner of the buffet. You still have the Xbox, but I have nothing. What am I supposed to do for Mother’s Day? Put pink tulips on your joystick?

Justin

“B twelve.”
“You sunk my battlevase!”
“I bet you’ll never want to play me at Battlepottery again. I beat you easy!”
“I don’t keep a grudge, water under the bridge.”
“Did you get your router fixed?”
“Yeah, was a simple fix.”
“Do you ever feel like you are just speaking some, I don’t know, something like scripted dialogue?”
“What do you mean?”
“Like everything we say is based on some random topics of some sick deity.”
“Not sick, he’s brilliant!”
“What? How do you know it’s a he, and if he’s brilliant or not?”
“Weird, where did that come from?”

Norval Joe

She blinked her eyes and turned away to hide the absense of tears. Her back to him she sniffed loudly and said, “sure it’s all water under the bridge, but you broke my vase, I mean, my heart, when you left with that woman.”
The blood drained from his face. He admitted, “She said she was here to change the router, that it was something simple, then she insisted I take her for a drink. It wasn’t easy to deny her”
As he left the room, head bowed, she quickly checked the vase to insure the microfilm was still there.

Arri

“Crap, now how do we target? When you broke my router’s guide fluid vase you made simple intra system duck soup navigations into this cluster frakked heap of Ederbanook computations. I HATE Ederbanookians!”
“Like relax dude. It’s all water under the bridge. It’s easy to out run those fuzzy morons. You just put your holo girlfriend on the vid with that phase filter like we used to at academy. Have her say-”
“But really there’s no problem officer!”
I just wanted to abduct the alien for personal reasons.“
“The dislogic overamps their matrix for long enough.”
“Don’t try weirding me…”

Planet Z

Johnny was in the middle of a championship round deathmatch when the router when down.
He ran to the wiring closet to reset it, but bumped into an antique vase and it broke on the floor.
“Mom’s gonna kill me,” he said.
He thought it would be something simple to glue it back together, but it’s never that easy. He could still see the cracks.
So, when his mother came home, he made it look like she bumped into him and knocked him into the vase, breaking it again.
He cried. She said it’s okay.
All water under the bridge.