Weekly Challenge #323 – Flies

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 Twenty-Three, 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 flies.

And we’ve got stories by a lot of people:

Thomas
William R. Davis-Kenmore Swipe
Guard 13007
Colonel Terrance
Pam
Chris Munroe
Serendipity Haven
Tom
Guy David
Lizzie Gudkov
Logan Berry
Cliff
Steven the Nuclear Man
Dionysus Clowes
Severina Halostar and Bonchance Longfall
Zackmann
Danny Dwyer
RedGoddess
Norval Joe
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.

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THOMAS

Flies, flies, flies. Buzzing, unremitting, everywhere–covering our bodies, thick on our foreheads and cheeks, sucking up the sweat with their sponge-like mouth parts – eating the soil on our bodies, vomiting on the crumbs of food found on us, leaving a micro-swill of human and animal waste in their path. We had been on the big field for hours with no water or food. We kept getting pushed and driven by our tough, androgynous, tyrannical leader. We were knocked down, and pummeled. Eventually, the coach called “showers” and the girl’s middle school soccer team tryouts closed for the day.

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Tad’s dad tied fishing flies for relaxation. His most exquisitely tied flies were the soft hackles and spiders, the midge selection, and the traditional wets. We knew that Tad’s father was committed, and often went to extremes to gather materials for his hobby. He liberated all the spools of dental floss in the house, collected squirrel tails, deer hair, pheasant tail, mallard flank, rooster necks and moose body hair from live animals. We had to put a stop to it. He was out of control. His wife was troubled when he snipped some of her red curls as she dozed.

WILLIAM

Her mother and father didn’t suspect, but Hanna Reitsch was an aviatrix. She kept it a secret from her family and her church pastor. In 1941, Adolf Hitler gave this fearless and skilled Luftwaffe Captain the first Iron Cross awarded to a woman for testing a device designed to cut the lines holding barrage balloons. Hanna, standing only 4’7” and weighing 322 pounds, had to fly in a custom cockpit, and her plane’s design was such that a limited amount of fuel was carried in the big Fokker as she landed near Hitler’s bunker, carrying a general to a meeting.

GUARD

I sit down at my computer to write, but amazing how beautiful a thing it is, distractions here, distractions there, I’m stuck at 27% and I miss another week… It’s time for a new plan.

A few weeks later, I’m standing over a shallow grave, surrounded by flies. Hah! He’ll never shovel such a deadline on me again! I .. shovel .. dirt on Laurence Simon, cursing him for .. shoveling .. away my ability to think of good stories and .. shoveling .. the word shovel into my mind.

I go home and wait for a new episode. Wait and Wait, but it never comes.

COLONEL TERRANCE

He was told that his idea flies in the face of everything known about matter and energy. He believed that the particle he isolated would shrink to a point where its density was such that it would weigh so much that it would sink through the earth, overcome gravity on the other side of the world, and continue on, ad infinitum, to the edge of the universe, where it would enter a parallel universe. He listened carefully to what his professors said during his doctoral orals, pondered a moment, and said…”Oh, sorry. You’re probably right.” He left the meeting, crushed.

PAM

The light shone on a tiny blob of clay. A booming voice announced, “Begin!”
Their eyes shall have thousands of lenses yet see little detail;

Their eyes shall have full 360-degree peripheral vision;
They shall feed on decaying flesh;

They shall be a food source for amphibians, birds, and arachnids;
They shall carry hundreds of diseases;

Their larvae shall be able to heal wounds;
They shall live for less than 30 days;

They shall lay thousands of eggs in a lifetime;
They shall have stingers;
Silence ensued. . .
“Counter?”
“Nothing sir.”
“Strike the stinger and send the flies to production. Next.”

MUNSI

HR sent somebody by earlier this week, to quell office discontent.

Davidson? Donaldson? Something like that.

We keep his severed head on a stick now.

We put it there to send a message. We’re no longer an accounts receivable department worried about layoffs, we’re animals. Naked, filthy, claiming the sixth floor as our own, refusing to be moved.

If they send another beast, we’ll kill it.

We’ll smash its head.

We’ll spill its blood.

And I sit among my tribe, upon a throne that once was an office chair, surveying my people like a monarch.

The lord of the files.

SERENDIPIDY

Thank goodness for poetic licence, I say… If language were purely descriptive, the world would be a very strange place!

Take flies…

Consider if house flies really were great, flying, buzzing apartments, or fruit flies took the form of bananas and peaches, (very messy for swatting!). Imagine horse flies, cantering through the summer skies… best watch out for, erm… ‘fall out’!

Of course, damsel flies would be lovely: All flaxen hair and diaphanous gowns; all very demure and pretty, but then again, just imagine the enormous hassle of having to constantly rescue them from gigantic, scaly, fire-breathing… dragon flies!

TOM

Welcome to the 60th Annual Lord of the Flies Island Iron Man. You will note significant rule changes to limit our mortality rate. Last year proved a bit lively and our designated “Piggy”, Norman Bacon, may he rest in peace, succumbed to a spear to the temple. Spear blows are now restricted to arms and legs. The Board has decided to retire our beloved Beelzebub after 20 years of service. The smell from the old sow was inducing projectile vomiting which placed our ESPN contract in jeopardy. Are we ready Jack? Ralph sound the conch. OH No he dropped it.”

GUY

At first, Hitchcock thought about using flies. He worked laboriously for months with a fly trainer before ruling that out. Then he thought about using cats. The cats had other ideas and putting them on telephone poles proved to be a near impossibility. Their inability to fly was also a problem, so he turned his mind to bats. It worked well at first until day time came and the bats decided it was time to go to sleep. He went for a long walk which ended with a bird staining he best vest with bird poop. The rest is history.

LIZZIE

Aim, target locked, shoot. Swoosh. And again. The whole afternoon. That damn tennis ball flew left and right. It was driving the neighbor crazy. Knock, knock. Yes? Can’t you knock it off in there? I’m killing flies. I don’t care; just stop it. Swoosh. Just stop it! Swoosh. Stop the goddamn ball throwing! Silence. The door slid open slowly. Here comes a ball, the neighbor thought, but I’m ready. He focused. A huge fly came through the door… Swoosh. The fly went in the neighbor’s mouth, the ball hit his forehead and the door slammed on his nose. And shot!

LOGAN

Garrett stands completely still as they set the wire on his chest, and he speaks in a normal, steady tone when asked to, in order to test the microphone and reception. “Test, test, test.” He holds out his arms accommodatingly as the heavy mesh vest is slipped over his torso.

He knows he will not survive; he knows it in his heart and soul and toes. Kara will never believe he has returned of his free will–it simply flies in the face of their history, their shared memories of the betrayal and of the lives needlessly lost.

He buttons up his shirt slowly and with concentration, nods to them without meeting their eyes, and leaves.

CLIFF

I was a stupid kid. When I was cross with my cousin for not letting me ride his bike, my grandmother admonished me.
“You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.”
I tested her theory. Outside, I laid out a bowl of vinegar and a bowl of honey. A few flies landed on both bowls but neither seemed to have any drawing power. I did notice lots of flies in the pasture where grandpa kept a bull.
“Hey, Grandma! You know what really draws flies?”
Then I told her.
I got my mouth washed out with soap. See? Stupid.

STEVEN THE NUCLEAR MAN

“The zombies stopped moaning,” she said, her back pressed against the doorframe. “Just stopped.”

I rose from the couch, checking her for wounds. For bites. “The vocal cords probably rotted away.”

She swatted my hand away. “I don’t care why! One almost got me because I didn’t hear it.”

I held her, whispering reassuring words into her hair. “We’ve survived this long. You can make it through this. We will find a way.”

I realized what I heard too late. That the buzzing sound, growing louder, were swarms of flies drawing closer.

Swarms of flies feasting on rotting zombie flesh.

DIONYSUS

Fleyes In a Bottle

I found this note in a stoppered bottle along the coast of Malaysia:

It’s been 300 days since I last saw Marie, and 200 here. I will never see home or her again, our son at her breast. If you find this, think of the fate that destroys lives in this haphazard

Where was it from? When was it written? I couldn’t tell. I returned to my own Maria. It was 9 months later, our child due, when I discovered these marks at the bottom of the page, and remembered the flies:

sigz daz ezgape no fleyez iz unlucky

Flies

It was either flies or piles of crap everywhere forever.

Of course at first nobody had a problem with piles of crap, since everywhere was pretty big.

It was Michael came up with the idea of “recycling” — when I first heard the idea he was calling it “eternal life.” Then everybody started throwing in this, that and the other — somebody called that “brainstorming” — and it got really confused, really fast.

Chaotic, because it was never clear what was supposed to be recycled or eternal or whatever it was supposed to be.

Anywho, we ended up calling them “flies.”

SEVI AND BONCHANCE

Pablo fell awkwardly into his comfortable bed. It was adorned with gold stars. He suspected that the liquid called “scotch” might be a big part of his new pal’s skit. He just realized, Clumsy was always sipping from his flask full of scotch.
Pablo finished lapping up some water laced with the golden liquid. Words swamed in his head as he drifted off to sleep listening as Clumsy the Clown waxed philosophically about audience responses and how they sometimes fly in the face of logic.
Pablo had nightmares that night. He was terrorized by evil flies buzzing around his face.

ZACKMANN

“Sure, I have a biplane replica that I can rent you and you can even hire me to pilot it but Why?” asked Manager John
“Because I heard Canada is a great place for fly fishing and catch a lot of flies” replied Charlie
“You mean you want to use artificial flies to catch fish, right?” said John
“No, my uncle was so proud to have killed a lion back in the day and I read in a nature magazine that flies and mosquitoes were so much more dangerous than any other animals that I wanted to show him up”

DANNY

I just finished reading Lord Of The Flies. Then I realized the conveluted story I’m about to weave here has nothing to do with that book. Have you ever noticed that flies have the cutest littel feet? Like this one fly I’ve had a crush on since I was in grammer school. She sprained her cute little ankle falling off an apple tree. She could not walk, so I gave her a foot massage. The light returned back to her soul, and she sprang back to life. I do not want to spend another day in this life without her.

REDGODDESS

Lola wakes up, soaking in sweat from a mind-blowing dream. She sits in the dark with a slight smile, flashing back to what she has experienced. After her mystery date, she walks through a hidden door. Lola is standing in a VIP suite, furnished with a massage table and king bed covered in peach petals. On the bed, lays a gift box with a purple bow. A round table, facing the water view, is set with a glass of red wine and platter of chocolate covered raspberry. Suddenly, a dove flies through the room and perches itself on Lola’s shoulder.

NORVAL JOE

The company had traveled more than two hundred yards underground. Though it had taken only a handful of minutes to get from the farmer’s basement to the safety of the woods, each split second spent passing through the solid earth felt like an eternity.
The demons still swarmed around the farmer’s home like flies on a dead dog.
“We must hurry,” the rangers said. “Those creatures will be distracted until they find we are no longer in the house.”
“What shall we do with the farmer?” Owen asked.
“Bring him,” Shareeka said. “Leaving him to the demons would be ungracious.”

The dining flies over the picnic tables snapped in a sudden gust of wind. The adult scout leaders snoozed in their tents, unaware the campsite was empty. Time flies when you’re old. When you’re just a boy your lifetime seems limitless, your body immortal.
The boys lined up under starlit sky at the edge of the cliff, their backs to the wind.
The quartermaster held a flashlight on his stop watch. The senior patrol leader called, “On your mark, get set, go.”
When the last boy called, “done.” He was declared the winner and they all zipped up their flies.

PLANET Z

My daughter reads her joke book aloud: “What has four wheels and flies?”

“A garbage truck,” I say.

She laughs. “What’s black and white and red all over?”

“A newspaper,” I say.

She doesn’t laugh.

“It’s a homynym. Red. Read. Spelled differently, sounds smiliar.”

She nods, and my wife takes the joke book from her. “You need to get ready for school.” Looking at me: “And you’re late for work.”

I kiss her on the cheek, put on my gloves, and walk out the door.

Ned’s parked the garbage truck on the curb.

“We gotta fly!” says Ned.

I laugh.