Welcome to the Fifty-fourth Weekly Challenge, 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 selected by Laieanna from HodgePodge Point, and it’s Pea Shooter.
Nine stories were submitted this week. Double digits!
The excellent theme music is by Guy David
And, once again, some disturbing madness from the one we all knew and loved as Planet Z.
Go ahead and listen to them by clicking on the grammophone thingy there in the left column and then vote for your favorites (multiple selections are allowed):
WE GOTS PRIZES:
I will be sending the winner a prize… it’s a packet containing at least 1 refrigerator magnet and a CD with the archive of the entire 100 word stories podcast. (Well, minus promos and junk)
It is your voting that determines who wins. So listen, vote, and tune in next week to find out who won!
The full text of each story:
CHRIS
The only meal inmates ever looked forward to in Shawshank was shepherd’s pie. Ground beef covered with layers of mashed potatoes and peas, as prison food goes it was the closest any of us would come to fine dining.
My good friend Andy Dusfresne hated shepherd’s pie and for good reason. It always signaled a visit from “Pea-Shooter” Jenkins, a beefy bull queer from cellblock A. Pea-Shooter always asked for seconds, and then he’d go looking for Andy. In the days that followed, Andy would walk with a noticeable limp, leaving a trail of peas on the ground behind him.
CALEB
I reckon Whitey shoulda knowed not to flinch. I seen Pea Shooter Johnson shoot a pea out a man’s flat hand a dozen times from twenty yards away. The only time anything went wrong is when somebody flinched.
N’ I reckon Whitey shoulda knowed that he’d lose his other hand if he went seeking vengeance.
However, the trick of shooting the gun out a man’s hand is slightly less impressive when that gun has already fired.
I reckon Pea Shooter won’t be shooting anymore, rest his soul.
Then again, neither will Whitey… Less’n he learns to shoot with his feet.
TOM
One might mistake a drinking straw for a pea shooter, but it lacks the tinsel integrity rigidity and diameter to propel a pea with sufficient velocity to make one of your friends flinch. The fathers of my three best friends regulars beat them with fist shoe and belt. It was hard to make them flinch.
We would weave balloon tired schwinns between the cars parked at Garfalos grocery pneumatically pelting each other with peas. Getting catch in a cross fire I snapped my head back and plowed into the mirror of a 43 Packard.
Blood everywhere.
They flinched. I won.
LAIEANNA
“Got one in the nostril! Watch him flail,” Bernie celebrated over screams and cries. A celery stalk whizzed by, hitting a howling child. Tom gave Bernie the thumbs up then aimed his bow again for a redheaded girl.
“Hey!” Shawn shouted next to Bernie, tapping his helmet. “Look there!” He pointed past the barrier towards the west. Clambering over a broken wall, preteens were making off with a Wii and Xbox.
“Bazooka,” Bernie ordered, dropping his pea shooter to load a broccoli head. The weapon was fired. Four kids fell. “When will the brats learn? These are adult toys now!”
SISTER MARY EDITH
Dr Janet sighed as she clicked on her nostril flashlight. The concerned father flitted about her like a bird watching a cat approach its nest. Janet peered into the darkness. A great green orb nestled in the coral pink.
“That, Mr. Totenpepper, is a pea.”
“Oh is that all! Sweetie blow your nose…Blow like this…Blow or no desert!”
The child’s face crinkled and she opened her mouth to howl but Dr. Janet was ready. She whipped out a colorful cardboard target and a sucker.
The girl’s face cleared. She took a deep breath and…The pea clung to the cardboard. Bulls-eye.
MIKE
Ted was disgusted.
“This pea shooter is practically useless.” he thought
Previous mistakes weren’t important now,
someones coming.
Ted dashed into an office
looking for anything useful.
Suddenly, the door shattered, a menacing form appeared.
“This is it” Ted muttered
Letting loose with abandon,
running behind his adversary,
Ted’s pea shooter making pathetic yet satisfying “pops”.
His enemy stood motionless, as Ted destroyed him,
Screaming cheers of victory!
Thousands of miles away, Jeff cursed,
monitor cable wrapped around his ankle.
His brother behind him roaring in unrestrained laughter.
Jeff reconnected it just in time to see Teds text message
“n00b!”
TERRENCE
Shifting Raoul tried to ignore the increasing pressure in his bladder.
Eve was sleeping but not deeply. ‘I do not want to wake her’, he
thought to himself before giving himself a mental slap. ‘What I am
worried about?’ he scolded himself, ‘I am Raoul, she should be
cowering before me.’ Even though he thought it firmly he knew that
there was something about Eve; something that changed him when she was
around.
Carefully he slid out of bed and tip-toed to the bathroom. He then
slowly lifted the seat, took his pee shooter in hand and emptied his
bladder.
TO4M
No text given
TED
Tommy and Nick were bored. It was a rainy Sunday afternoon and there seemed to be nothing to do.
I explained to them, that when I was a boy, we used to make peashooters, and have compeitions. See who could be the best marksman. I also told them that the cat was not a target. “Use soup cans” I said. “or make paper targets”.
The boys disappeared into Tommys bedroom.
An hour later, the boys emerged from the room, soaking wet. Stinking of urine. Empty squirtguns in hand.
“Uncle Rocky?” Tommy squeaked. “We’re out of ammo. Can you pee in my waterpistol for me?”
PLANET Z (as IRA GLASS)
Paul and Zachary were ordinary kids from Harlem, sitting around, bored.
Zachary looks at the massacre in Bush’s illegal war in Iraq and comes up with the idea to go on a killing spree.
“But let’s make it interesting,” says Paul. “Let’s kill people we know in alphabetical order.”
So they go on a tear through the neighborhood: Andy, Betty, Cecil, Dwanitra… all the way up to P.
And that’s when Zachary pulls out his gun and shoots Paul.
“Why did you do that?” gasped Paul.
“Because you talk too damn much,” said Zachary. “And we don’t know any Q’s.”
Thanks to everyone for sending in their stories, and I look forward to what you’ve got to write (and say) next week.
The theme for next week’s Weekly Challenge will be posted shortly.