Welcome to the 100 Word Stories podcast at podcasting.isfullofcrap.com. I’m your host, Laurence Simon.
This is Weekly Challenge Number Three Hundred and Seventeen, 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 Bar.
And we’ve got stories by a lot of people:
Thomas
TJ
Serendipity Haven
Bonchance and Sevi
Tom
Guy David
Tura
Chris Munroe
Lizzie Gudkov
Chris The Nuclear Kid
June
Cliff
Norval Joe
RedGoddess
Zackmann
Planet Z
And if you want to spam your social networks with this episode, use the Share buttons at the end of the post…
Obligatory cat photo:
The more people see this on Google Plus, Facebook, and Twitter – the more explaining you’ll have to do with your loved ones, coworkers, and parole officers.
THOMAS
The bar was put up higher. Dubbie thought she could handle the change when it was put up, but she quickly learned that it was beyond her reach. She knew she had to, so she began working extra hard, after school and on Saturdays…practicing and going over everything again and again. When the contest came, Dubbie felt fully prepared. She got in line, and when the bell rang to begin the games, she climbed onto the high stool at the long bar and drank herself silly, beating all the locals in the chug-a-lug, Zambrano, Sink The Battleship, and Who Shit?
##
Ronnie asked the artist to put a bar in her nose — 18 carat gold and heavy, so it pulled her nose down until it touched her upper lip. Punks and hipsters that saw her remarking how beautiful her jewelry looked, but how bad her nose looked. Her friend, Salli, told her what others would not. Ronnie returned to the shop that installed the gold bar. The shop was closed. Ronnie asked Marvin, to cut the bar with bolt cutters, as the threads were jammed. Marvin was stoned. He clipped a half inch off her nose on the first try.
TJ
Security
Karen’s missing daughter could be anywhere. My first thought was to
rouse the night manager, but it was 4:50 a.m. and he was nowhere to be
found. There was a camera in the lobby and a door marked “Security,”
where I imagined the video would probably be. I unclipped a scanner from
my toolkit and fitted it to the slot in the door. Karen’s eyes
widened. “What are you,” she asked. “Strike Force Alpha?”
“I’m a locksmith,” I shrugged. “Who do you suppose installs
these electronic locks?”After some negotiation the scanner beeped, the
lock flashed green and we stepped inside.
Video
Along one wall a bank of monitors showed images from the lobby, as well
as from the kitchen, the laundry room, the bar and the pool. The
kitchen, bar and laundry room feeds covered the rear alleyway entrances
and there was a gated garden enclosure beyond the pool, so along with
the lobby itself, if Laurie – Karen’s 15-year-old daughter’s name
was Laurie – had passed through any of these spaces in the last eight
hours we should be able to track her. I loaded five jump drives from the
recorders and padded back to my room with worried mother in tow.
SERENDIPITY
Every team talk is the same old nonsense – “Gotta do better, try harder, reach further, we’re talking about raising the bar…”
It’s all talk, of course. We nod, make noises in agreement and secretly look forward to a beer and a joke about it after work.
Same again this week: “…we’re gonna raise that bar!”
Yeah right. We smiled inwardly at the mantra and yawned.
We stopped smiling when clocking-off time came round – the damn fools had only gone and done it!
How can you buy a beer, when you can’t even reach to the top of the bar?
BOMCHANCE AND SEVI
Bar by Severina Halostar and BC
Dave leaned back waiting, anxiously awaiting an answer from Megan, a reply to his comments.
As usual he agreed with his girlfriend 100%. There was way too much government supervision into peoples’ private lives. Big brother has bigger ears and eyes now that social media has become popular.
Megan had strong opinions on privacy laws, she frequently ranted about this subject.
He looked at the clock, downed his coffee and closed his laptop.
2am.
People poured out of the narrow bar entrance.
Sgt Dave Anderson smiled, watching a couple stagger to their car.
Eureka!
He would make quota this month!
Bar by Severina Halostar and BC
Tom laughed to himself, hands down, he knew he could do it. The day goes by slowly. As afternoon approaches, the earlier conversation is forgotten.
Tom stops in at the local watering hole with his buds after work, as usual. His enjoyable evening ritual.
Past 1 am, Tom attempted to sneak into the apartment without waking his wife, but she was wide awake and waiting for him.
“You were right honey, looks like I can’t pass one without stopping in.
Already upset, now furious, “You never listen to me fool!
I said I can’t pass the Bar without nonstop studying!”
TOM
Mark slid the Bombay and Schweppe across the bar to the nun. Mother Theresa nursed the drink while maintaining a 10,000-yard stare. In a delightful Belgium slur she mused “What the F! Does Mother Senton got, I ain’t got?” Mark stops polishing a tumbler and posed the possibility of still being alive as a deterrent to actual sainthood. “Ya, but was she a Martyr, No, and a bloody American too boot. Did she personally meet three, three popes? I’m a goddamn living legion.” “I think you meant legend.” “Whatever. Saint Theresa it rolls off the tongue, T-res-a. Damn Nazi”
GUY
I watched the progress bar as I uploaded myself into the new body. It was a fashionable one, female with huge wings, white as snow. As the upload completed, my old body slumped down lifeless and I was ready to test the new model, invigorated and youthful. I stood there for hours, naked in front of the bathroom mirror, examining every pore on my naked skin, feeling myself. My breasts where heavier then I thought they would be, my wings lighter. I would make a new life for myself, start anew with this new body. I was at last reborn.
TURA
On the glass shelves behind every bar there is always a display of strangely shaped bottles full of strangely coloured liquids, and you know, I’ve never seen them used.
At one bar I discreetly photographed them every few days. The fluid levels never changed, but the bottles themselves moved from one picture to another, so I made a time-lapse movie. They’re alive!
And they know I know. I haven’t been in a bar since, but this morning at home I found a miniature of some garish yellow liquid with a long Italian name. I took it outside and smashed it.
MUNSI
So last week’s mission didn’t exactly go smoothly…
You were caught slipping the note into the book, the librarian alerted an international network of booksellers and librarians, and now you’re on the run, legions of angry, literate assassins hounding your every move.
I can’t help, in some small way, feeling responsible.
Tell you what, run to Canada, hide here until it blows over. I’ll meet you at Tipparary’s, even buy the first round.
It’ll be okay.
Because here, at the bar.
You’ll feel safest of all.
We can lock all the doors.
It’s the only way to live.
In bars…
LIZZIE
It was right there, they thought. At least, that’s how they remembered it. But it wasn’t right there. Hours of roaming the city, blinded by neon lights, and the two could simply not find it.
“You didn’t bring the card,” John said.
“Again?!” sighed Peter.
Suddenly, one wrong turn and there were four of them… The strike hit Peter on the temple.
“What are you looking for?” asked the stranger.
“Nothing,” replied John.
“Finish him off.”
A faint “No…” was muffled by the cold iron bar swooshing in the air.
A card slipped from John’s back pocket saying Pigeons’ Bar.
CHRIS THE NUCLEAR KID
When I awoke I looked at the map I had noticed the night before. Putting the paper on the map I found that it made an outlined tunnel system that supposedly ran under the town. The entrance was under my room’s bed.
I moved the bed from the wall and saw a trapdoor with a old lock. I kicked the lock breaking it lose then opened the door. A gust of dusty air rushed out and I climbed down the old ladder.
Following the tunnel I came to a large bronze door. But, sadly it was locked. So, I left.
JUNE
When I dropped out of college, home became a hotel room.
This is because my parents lost their house two weeks into my “journey”.
Homesick, my brother and I smoked pipes and watched reruns of Cheers.
When he passed out, I left the room.
Insomnia is a way of life when your bed is an armchair.
The hotel bar was closed to me, and no one knew my name. So I wandered
the dead streets outside, writing songs of loss.
Eighty songs later, I am glad I could not get a drink.
Though I found other ways to destroy myself.
CLIFF
I used to work at this watering hole that attracted a bunch of cartoonists. I don’t know why. Apparently we were just the closest joint to the animation studios. This was back before all the cartoons were done by Korean computers, of course. So this one day, an Artist comes in and I thought all hell was going to break loose. He was drinking his Cosmo and putting down our regulars as hacks and sellouts. I really thought it was going to come to blows. So, I took care of it with his second drink. I slipped him a Mickey.
This story is dedicated to my friend Tom who is the artist behind the webcomic ThoseFunkyIdiots.com. I’d record the story and shameless plug myself but a tiny ninja stole my recording equipment.
NORVAL JOE
The farmer sat at his dinner table, alone, too tired to eat. His wrinkled face sagged, his sun-spotted pate tipped forward as he dropped into sleep.
He might have thought it a dream if his heart wasn’t pounding through his rib cage, as the wizardess burst into his home.
Her grey eyes flashed and she asked, “Are there any windows in the house?”
An elf stepped to the hearth and began to chant.
“No, none,” the farmer grunted.
“Good,” the woman said. “Owen, bar the door.”
“We beg your hospitality, good man,” Shareeka said. “A storm is about to break.”
REDGODDESS
Lola woke up twenty minutes after her alarm went off. After a quick shower, she threw on her plain blue uniform, and busted out of her apartment for the bus. She was welcomed by the dragon lady fuming about incomplete service requests. By midday, there was a smoke smell complaint, an overflowed toilet in the penthouse and accident by a dog in the elevator. She was ready to walk out for good, when she stuck her hand in her pocket for master keys, instead found a business card with a handwritten message, “meet me at the bar for a surprise.”
ZACKMANN
“I found a recipe for super great cookie bars that are said to taste even better than those coconut collision cookies you love from the coffee shop next to Boarderlands Books sf.” boasted Dylan
“Wow, are those supposed to be so big?” said Zack
“I followed the recipe. I can’t imagine what went wrong.” replied Dylan.
“Which spoon did you use for measuring the baking soda?” asked Zack
The one that is marked with Capital T for tea spoon.” said Dylan.
“That is for Table Spoon. Lowercase ts is for Tea Spoon.
Sometime you can raise the bar too high.“
PLANET Z
The last time I saw Ricky, the rollercoaster attendant lowered the lap-bar into place.
The cars went up, teetered over the hill, and raced along the track.
Everyone screamed and raised their hands.
At the end of the ride, people laughed and got up.
Except Ricky.
He was gone.
“Where’s Ricky?” I asked the attendant.
“Who?” he said.
We looked everywhere.
They shut the ride down and searched.
Gone without a trace.
I smiled… the time portal worked!
“I’ll see you in a week, Ricky,” I whispered.
A week later, he reappeared.
And got creamed by a speeding rollercoaster car.