Shutterbug

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A while back, I had to go to a place and shoot pictures of an awards ceremony.
When I got there, I realized I had forgotten to bring any film.
I walked around, pretending to snap photos, but all I was doing was pressing the shutter.
No film, no photos.
So when the ceremony was over, the organizer tapped me on the shoulder and said “I guess there won’t be any pictures.”
I held up my camera. “I took a lot of photos,” I said. “Just gotta develop the film.”
The organizer reached over and took off the lens cap.

The Chicken Password

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Ever forgotten a very important password?
I once forgot the password to a secure system that didn’t have a way to recover the password.
It was so secure, the software author couldn’t even get into the system once it had a password added to it.
In the end, I had to go to a hypnotist to get them to dig around my mind to find the password.
They snapped their fingers, and I thought I was a chicken.
“Bawk!” I screeched, and I flapped crazily around the room.
The hypnotist typed in “Bawk!” and the system booted right up.

Swine Flu

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The Big Bad Wolf didn’t care about this whole Swine Flu scare. He was hungry.
So he huffed, puffed, and coughed for about a minute.
A window opened in the straw house, and the first little pig laughed.
“Caught a bad case of the flu, wolf?” he asked.
The wolf grabbed at him, but his muscles were aching badly and he missed.
Two more pigs walked up behind the wolf.
One hit him in the leg with a piece of wood, and the wolf fell down, howling with pain.
The other pig hit him in the head with a brick.

Stick it to The Man

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Things are always getting worse for me and Joey.
Joey lost his job. My hours are getting cut back. The apartment’s a wreck.
Nothing ever works out for either of us.
Joey’s always saying we gotta stick it to The Man.
But Joey never says how we’re supposed to stick it to The Man.
What glue sticks it to The Man?
Do we use staples and thumbtacks?
And what exactly is “it” we’re supposed to stick?
Joey says I’m too literal.
I say Joey needs to provide concrete examples.
He shrugs.
Is this how The Man sticks it to us?

April White

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I knew this girl. Her name is April.
But she was born in May.
Her full name was April White.
Except, she was black.
Her whole life was a bunch of opposites, one after the other.
Some folks could handle them and others couldn’t.
I thought I could, but each time I thought I knew her, she turned out to be someone completely different.
So, when we were supposed to be coming closer together, we ended up drifting apart.
Until one day, she was gone.
Or was I gone, and she was where she’d been all along?
I’m so confused.

Liberated

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We were liberated by the British.
The Americans, they bring doctors. They bring food. They bring water. They bring medicine. They bring trucks and jeeps. They talk and they cry.
The British, they bring nothing. Not even clothes.
I ask one for food, and he turn his back on me. He get into his jeep and drive off with other soldiers.
I cannot eat freedom. I cannot wrap myself in freedom.
We wander in the street, the forest.
We do not know where to go or what to do.
It starts to rain, and we open our mouths to drink.

Weekly Challenge #157 – Falling Bricks Hurt

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Welcome to the Weekly Challenge Number One Hundred And Fifty Seven, 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 Falling Bricks Hurt.
The excellent theme music is by Guy David
VOTING

Which were the best stories this week?
Ted from http://whineandopine.blogspot.com/
Guy David from http://guydavid.com
Tom from http://footnote.libsyn.com/
Norval Joe from http://www.norvalsoutlook.blogspot.com/
Mike P from http://mjpaxton.com
Anima from http://www.zabbadabba.com
Michael S
Sophie
Lynda from http://sisterpepperspray.blogspot.com/
Justin from http://www.thespaceturtle.com/
Danny from http://dannymachal.com/
Planet Z
  
Free polls from Pollhost.com

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


Ted

“Life’s full of pain… hemorrhoids, gout… hell, falling bricks!”
Steve instantly regretted giving that last example.
“Dude, I’m done dating… and no more concerts!” Mordecai blurted, flailing his limbs.
“Try not being a putz for five minutes,” countered his companion, wearing a visibly weary visage. “Tell you what, let’s grab a nosh.”
The duo sauntered silently down the sidewalk.
“Steve… she’s just,” Mordecai stopped short as suddenly as he had shattered the reticence.
Steve sensed Mordecai’s mood turn from aggravation to resignation… and he realized this is how his friend would be every time Falling Bricks Hurt played The Palladium.

Guy David

Leon was walking down the street, when a flying teapot landed in front of him. Out of the teapot there came little funny men with funny Gnome hats and half moon faces. “We are the pot head pixies” said one of them, “we are here to show you how to have a good time,” then they kidnapped him and took him to the planet Gong, where they partied all night, and all day afterwards, then Leon awoke in his home with a hangover that was similar to a brick falling on his head, but had some strange colors in it.

Tom

The Urban tribe that occupied the ruined city had a tradition of naming their children after the first thing the mother saw after giving birth.
“Grandpa how did you get your name?”
“I was born during a eatherquake and that is why I’m called Falling Bricks Hurt”
“And Papa?”
“Your father was born on Christmas eve and he is called Batteries Not Included.”
“And Mama?”
“Your mother was born in the last operating taxi in the city and she’s called Objects In The Rearview Mirror May Appear Closer That They Are.”
“Thank you Grandpa.”
“Your very welcome Two Dogs Fucking.”

Norval Joe

Blocks away, across the city park, he set up the complicated apparatus. Multifaceted photoreceptors gathered solar power. He laughed vengefully as he flipped the lever on the clattering machine. A wormhole disintegrated the lower half of his ex-girlfriends apartment building, the upper half of the clay brick structure, subsequently, dropping though.
His victory over the woman, who embarrassed him in front of all his friends, was short lived.
The falling bricks hurt for only a moment, as the last of the upper three floors of apartment building dropped out of the other side of the wormhole, directly over his head.

Mike P.

Most people never look at the other side of sliced bread, unless it
falls butter side down. When the cookie crumbles all the chefs in the
kitchen cry like it’s spilt milk and no one calls for all the king’s
horses and all the king’s men in order to reassemble the pieces. When
the wolf huffs and puffs, people notice that the sticks and straw
crumple while bricks do not. It’s easy to assume that this is a story
about strong building materials, but it’s important to note that the
bricks are actually afraid to collapse. Falling bricks hurt
themselves.

Anima

“Frank –look! The bricklayers are almost done on the upper level . Ain’t it a beaut? Just like when we stacked blocks as kids.”
“Wow. I don’t know what to say Fred. It certainly is an interesting design. I’m glad the homeowner paid you up front…”
“Frank! I’m calling it “Falling Brick”. Aren’t the cantilevered decks just wonderful?”
“Yeah, but 7?… excessive, isn’t it?”
“Why are you always so practical? This way, every family member gets his own barbecue grill…”
“Fred, You’ve got a brick out of kilter over here. Let me see if I can fix that for you…”
“Nooooooo!”

Michael S

Little sister, Running Cantaloupe, run into teepee one day long ago. She been at river with little brother, Falling Bricks.
She scream,”Falling Bricks hurt, Falling Bricks hurt.”
We all go river. Falling Bricks only play like hurt.
Chief Two Dogs Humping not think funny. Take Falling Bricks to teepee.
They come out teepee.
Little brother hold butt and say, “Falling Bricks hurt.”
This time he no play.

Sophie

The headline reads “Falling Bricks Hurt Five”.
The story reads like it was boys night out and something went just a little wrong…just kid stuff.
The story is bullshit, so typical of the “feel good” press we have today.
I saw it happen, heard the screams.
It was nightfall…four teenaged boys standing on the overpass.
They were excited, cajoling, each using one hand to hold up their oversized pants.
They began hoisting cinder blocks over the bridge onto the traffic below, then ran off…laughing.
It was over in less than a minute.
Mayhem ensued.
Five dead.

Lynda

A 58-year-old man from Brooklyn with no prior arrests and no evidence of drug or alcohol dependency was transferred from police custody to the state mental institution after being arrested for disturbing the peace and complaining of auditory hallucinations.
Employed as a bulldozer operator for 30 years, the patient reported hearing screams from the site of a recent demolition. He was found attempting to rearrange rubble, excitedly repeating apologies and insisting the bricks must be reunited.
Prognosis looks bleak as the patient won’t stop trying to introduce the concrete blocks in his cell long enough to take medication.

Justin

Salim leaped the spike pit. It loomed in the middle of a well-traversed main hallway. Rubbish. What if the trap accidentally spung, hurting someone innocent? Salim forgot the spike trap and dodged three circular blades protruding from the walls and spun, moving vertically in a predictable pattern. Once past it, his thoughts moved onto his target: The Golden MacGuffin. Thievery was not his mission though. He wanted to destroy the Sultan’s palace. The man murdered his father. As soon he stole the MacGuffin, the palace would slowly crumble. The foolish Sultan shouldn’t have let videogame designers install the security system.

Danny

Justin wandered about in the shadows watching the fascinating people. He
smelled the breads and listened to the pop of corks for hours before finally
settling on the perfect sunny patch of grass to feast. Justin the turtle
munched on the greenery of the city he loved, Paris.
1,063 feet into the sky, Gaston Space Pierre ran back and forth on the
observation platform of the Eiffel Tower, his parents not at all effective.
A stray brick from a display for Gustave Eiffel found his palm. He tossed it
over the rails.
Justin looked up just in time to catch the impromptu solar eclipse to the
head.

Jeffrey

I had a friend who took all of the hard drives from the old 486 systems as we retired them. We all asked him what he was going to do with them, but he always gave us the same answer, these bricks, they are for my castle in the the clouds. Needless to say he was a little bit off his rocker. He had quite the wall of them when I left that job. He had taken his cubical wall down and replaced it with careful stacked hard drives. Then he was downsized. We heard the screams the bricks fell.

Planet Z

Falling bricks will hurt your grade.
That’s what the architecture professor says as we enter our designs into the weather simulator.
Rain. High winds. Maybe an earthquake if he’s pissed.
One by one, the buildings appear in the holography tank.
I wait for mine to appear.
Russian music begins to play in the room.
A colored brick falls from the top of the display and lands in my project’s gridspace.
Then another.
The professor raises his eyebrow.
Oh. Right. Tetris.
That memory module has my old arcade games on it.
He hands it back to me.
And whispers “F.”

Maggots

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I was in the hospital, laid up with a broken leg when the word got out that zombies were on the loose.
No guns. No machetes. Just fire extinguishers and the occasional bone saw.
That’s when it hit me.
“Maggots eat dead flesh,” I said. “Release a bunch of maggots and they’ll eat the zombies.”
The nurse went down to the stockroom and brought out three trays of maggots.
“Is that all?” I asked. “I was hoping for huge barrels full of the things. Maybe fill a moat with them.”
No.
Bar the doors. And pray the army shows up.

Ringing

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Tom lets the phone ring for a while before picking it up.
“Robots give up after four rings,” he explained. “If my friends really want to get me, they’ll let it ring ten or eleven times.”
The phone rings. Twice. Three times. Four times. Five times.
“What about robots who are your friends?” I ask.
For just a moment, Tom’s look gets dark. Angry.
“I have no robot friends,” he says.
Maybe today, but it wasn’t always the case.
Somewhere, deep in a lab under New Mexico, a mainframe caked with dust and spiderwebs.
Memory banks silent, filled with sadness.

Sacrifice That

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He commanded me to go up the mountain with my son and a knife.
“Prove your loyalty to me,” said The Lord. “Go kill him.”
God’s a prick. He’s always fucking with us like that.
Sacrifice this, recite that.
I’m tired of it.
So I let Him guide me up the mountain, His hand showing the way.
I lay my son on a flat rock, draw the knife, and ask if He’s sure about this.
“Just kidding,” He says. “Go sacrifice that goat.”
He points to a mountain goat.
I grab his Hand, cut off a finger, and swallow it.