Weekly Challenge #326 – Power

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-Six, 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 power.

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

And if you want to spam your social networks with this episode, use the Share buttons at the end of the post… this obligatory cat photo should help make the Internet go faster:

curly myst

THOMAS

The power went down just as Elton was in the middle of transport. Elton’s head appeared on the test stage . It was blue and cold. The rest of Elton was left in the vacuum chamber in the lab, and it, too, was blue and cold. Elton was a senior at the Tesla lab, and as such, was not the most popular or likeable man on the team. The janitor had been chastised by Elton, and as soon as the warning tags “do not power off” appeared on the panel, he flipped them over, sticking big smiley faces on them.

##

After the billionaire died, power passed to his son. The boy, Ulrich, was a liar, miscreant and determined to own the most rare of items in the most bizarre collection anyone could imagine. He went through underground channels, Chinese and Romanian middlemen, and New Jersey Mobsters to acquire Galileo’s thumb, first stolen in 1905, and Pope Shenouda’s nose, which had been buried at a desert monastery. Ulrich would indulge his friends at cocktail parties by showing everyone his collection. After a few months, the newest item joined the collection. Ulrich had his father’s johnson stuffed and displayed in the library.

##

It was power hour at Hillie’s Pub. For one hour, we were to drink a shot of draft beer, every minute. I figured that was about five, full beers. I was a little guy, and weighed about 145, wet. The bartender had a CD that she put together. Every minute a new tune would play, and that was our signal to pound another shot. After twenty shots, I had a buzz going, and after 30, I got loud and nasty. After forty, I took off my pants and dirty danced with Heloise, the house barfly. At 50, I passed out.

TOM

“For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever, Amen.” I’ve been messing with the bible since, well, the beginning. Not major stuff like two completely different genealogies for Yeshua bar Yahosef. Just some small stuff tacked on to keep theologians busy. As you will note my signature works is a good doxology, actually an over the top doxology. Think about it, a man who encourages you pray in a closet, turn the other cheek, suddenly goes all power and glory, get real. I actually ran the line by him, didn’t much care for it.

CHANTE

His head lifted at the scent of outside. A quick inspection rewarded him: an open door. He nudged it further with his nose, and the wide world beckoned as enticing as bacon or water after a run.
“Buzz, come!” he heard in the wind. Commanding and stern. Then “Treat!” said with a pleading edge.
But, there were trees to mark. The smells of others, fresh and old. People to bark at and who knows what more? No leash tugged at his throat, a mere couple feet afforded by its length. He’d return to the pack after a block or so.

SERENDIPITY

The pen may be mightier than the sword, but without words, the pen has no power.

Nobody was ever stirred to action by a felt-tip’s fervour, or moved to tears by a fountain pen’s pathos – no-one recoils from the acid bite of a biro or succumbs to the seduction of a murmuring magic marker.

Rather, it is the power of words that draws us in, caresses our souls and enfolds us in empathy. That same power which spurs us on to battle and fuels our victory cry!

Words are powerful things…

Just make sure you spell them right.

RAILS

I emptied the coal out of the bath, it was bath night after all, filled it with warm water and jumped in, pure heaven. Applied liberal amounts of soap and watched the bubbles slowly form.

Deep in thought, pondering the workings of the world, I reached across for a paper to read, why waste a good soak I thought, may as well read.

Some where along the way, my arm got tangled in the power cord of the portable electric heater, I tugged and it fell into the bath. Power to the people were my last spoken words on earth.

PHELAN

Power is the fulcrum between free-will and free-action. The closer one draws the will of others the more extreme the actions of those will cannot be bartered and vice-versa. Sustained use of any one type of power, be it coercive, expert, reward, referent, or positional, cannot be maintained indefinitely without consequences. Equilibrium must always be maintained applying the lease amount of pressure to steady the beam in achieving those aims which are to everyone’s benefit. To do otherwise means small differences will require extraordinary effort to maintain control. If history teaches us nothing else, let it be this.

JEFFREY

The weatherman said it was called a derecho, a storm with strong, straight-line winds. Whatever its name, the storm packed a wallop. Power has been out for a week. Everyone in the neighborhood went through a version of the five stages of grief, except that in this case it started with hope – hope that the damage wasn’t so bad, that we’d have power back soon. Stage two was denial – “Not again!” we’d moan. “This can’t have happened again.” Then we went to acceptance, which involved eating everything we could from the freezer before it went bad. Stage four was anger – a powerful rage that the electricity wasn’t back on yet. After that we just sat in our dark houses, sweat trickling down our backs, staring glumly at our blank television sets.

Oh power, how I miss you so.

SHRUTI

There was a difference of not more than half a dozen words between the 2 documents on his desk. That difference decided the future of a man’s life.

He had always been against taking lives but how did he justify pardoning a murderer.

The voices of the prisoner’s 87 year old victim and 6 year old child plead their cases even in his sleep.

It was his first case as the new Governor. He could feel the pressure of proving himself to the people who had appointed him.

He signed the paper.

Power wasn’t as euphoric as it had seemed.

ROBIN

I raced to the basement, flashlight in my hand. I thumped the door with my shoulder as it scraped across the basement floor. The small circle of light picked out the dust covered fuse box, and I unlocked it and reset all of the circuit breakers.
Back upstairs, Steve and I prepared the time machine for its inaugural run. “Let’s hope that doesn’t happen again” Steve said, “If the power cycle is interrupted, it might go into a loop.”
The machine primed, he flicked the switch. The lights went out.

“John”, Steve said, “Go reset the fuses. Here’s the key”.

MUNSI

To love a woman, you must first learn how to properly respect a woman.

And to respect a woman, you must first connect with her.

Connect through eye contact, or physically. Touch her arm as you speak, brush hair out of her eyes. That’s a very real source of connection.

Connect intellectually. Ask her questions about herself, get to know everything about her.

But most importantly, connect on a deep, spiritual level. Like so…

I wanna know what love is, and I want you to show me!

I wanna feel what love is, and I know you can show me!

ANN MINA

I worried when we didn’t have a fight.

What would it be like? Was it possible to just not fight? Would it be THE END? Combining two oldest siblings seemed a recipe for conflict.

I needed to get prepared. Games have rules. Fights should have rules too. Even war has rules. What are the rules?

Can we agree that we’re not fighting about breaking up unless we say so? Because after all, that would be end game.

When I get scared, I’m going to ask you if that’s what a fight is about.

If not, we can work it out.

LIZZIE

She walked through the long bridge and thought “they made me do it”. She entered the hall. Empty stares followed her slow paces. The assembly was gathered, as expected. When she reached the end of the aisle, he was standing there; the stranger. “We are gathered here…” a blur of words bundled together screamed at her “… take this man to be…” and then silence. It was her turn to speak apparently. The only word that came to her restless mind was… “No.” A murmur was heard throughout the hall. But she still had the power to decide after all.

ANIMA

Jay and me, we met down at The Nasty Comment in the Tenderloin.
We shared a few beers. Maybe ten too many. Next thing you know, I am being fascinated by his tattoos.

I noticed them as he raised his fists, preparing to knock me one. Across his knuckles, POWER and GLORY, inscribed in blurry indigo.

Throughout the galaxies, ex-cons are alike, on twin campaigns of professing their innocence and getting body art done out of boredom and gang affiliation.
Just some races have more (or less) appendages to work with.

Rigelians, poor bastiges, are digitally limited to DO IT.

TURA

“Stone blunts knife. I win!”

“This knife is of mithril, forged by Elrond himself! Your stone shatters!”

“My paper is made of woven nanofibres, one molecule thick! A paper cut takes your arm right off!”

“My stone is a lump of neutronium! It bursts through your paper like… like paper!”

“The edge of my knife is a cosmic string! The tidal forces alone rip your stone into plasma!”

“My paper bears writ thereon the secret of the universe, the power to unravel all creation!”

Suddenly, a gigantic figure loomed above the combatants. “Time for bed,” she said. And they went.

ZACKMANN

“It is so hot in here, why don’t you turn on the air conditioning?” asked Joe
“My baseline power billing makes my electric rate effectively triple
if I turn on the air conditioner so I normally leave it off unless it
is over one hundred degrees.” answered Zack
“So why is it off now?”
“I would have it on but it only works when I have electricity and the
the power often goes out when almost everyone is trying to use their
air conditioners.” replied Zack
“Let’s drive to the mall and see if they still have their power on”

KATFANCY

The sun set and Belinda began her nightly routine. She turned on a flashlight, ate ¼ of canned meat, and turned on her radio. She tried to find music, but there was only talk about a county-wide power outage. Belinda fell asleep in the backseat of her car to the sound of complaints about no electricity. The next day, her co-workers whined about no internet and Belinda nodded in agreement, too embarrassed to mention that she has lived in her car for over a month now. Later, everyone got their power back and Belinda hoped one day she would too.

BOTGIRL

Not a day in your life goes by without influencing and being influenced. Every thought that runs through your mind, every action great and small, is a link in a chain stretching all the way back to the Big Bang.

You have never experienced an influence-free moment in your life. It’s no wonder that “being under the influence” is a synonym for intoxication. You are never sober. You get shit-faced on each potent idea that passes the gate of your awareness. As you read this, my words have already entered your mind. Feel the buzz. You’ve been influenced!

DANNY

Power is a very deceiving thing. When I think I have mastered it, all of my clients declare mutiny, refusing to pay their bills. Then my house falls into forclosure. I declare bankrupcy on the practice I spent a lifetime building. Well, it can’t get any worse than this. Mere moments after my silly declaration, the electric shuts off, and my entire house falls into silence. My neighbor runs over to the front porch, where I sit staring blankly into the darkness. “Dude! It looks like your power has been shut off!” “Yeah, tell me something I don’t already know.”

STEVEN

The clouds billowed around Josh’s father as he entered. “I’ve tried everything with them, and still nothing.”

Josh raised an eyebrow. “Everything?”

His father sat down heavily. “Yes. Set boundaries. Punishments when they broke the rules. Intervened when bullies were pushing them around. Even let them deal with the consequences of their own actions when they disobeyed.”

Josh smirked. “Perfect.”

His father’s brow and the clouds behind him darkened. “Perfect?”

“Yes, Father. Perfect.” Josh grasped his father’s shoulder. “And now I’ll just show them kindness and love.” Josh’s smile made cherubim shiver.

“And then they’ll be devoted to us forever.”

BONCHANCE AND SEVI

Power

Will had the power! It was all up to him now!
There was nothing he couldn’t do! He heard a dull rumbling that was unrecognizable.

The lower he went, the more it sounded like human voices.
Banking his arms, rotating down, like a bird circling its prey. The voices became clearer.

He heard words similar to his thoughts saying, there was nothing else they could do for Tom. It was all up to him
to come out of it.

The chanting began. My name is Tom! I need will power! It’s all up to me!
Tom woke from his coma.

Power

Pablo decided to trade his scotch to the local Wiseman. The vagabond had his bed in the alley around the corner.
Wiseman seemed to be the least washed people in the world. They seemed allergic to water!

The worse the invasion on Pablo’s snout, the wiser he thought they were. The lingering fog of alcohol couldn’t
dampen that wisdom!

Pablo was now the owner of a magic ticket with a power ball! The power ball made the magic that much stronger.
He just had to wait until the draw, then trade his ticket in for the truck load of money.

GUARD 13007

Within a few weeks, Life Field Relay Inc. found itself with the fortunes of several of the wealthiest people and in the pockets of several governments. Backdoor deals were forged, illegal agreements became completely legal, those in office came to stay in office, probably forever.

Slowly, all the power in the world drained into them, and people either worked for them or didn’t work. It took about a year for global domination, but it was a sure and steady thing, despite the constant attacks trying to learn the secrets that made their systems work.

It was now just “The Corporation”

REDGODDESS

“Power is a dirty filthy thing,” Lola said out loud a colleague. That word falls in the ranks of money, sex, tax and poverty except they’re brushed under the rug. Coincidently, these hushed social taboos take center stage during presidential elections. Once at the hotel, Lola has no time to worry about social issues, she has a new intern to train. She suddenly feels a strange sense of anxiety about coaching a trainee about what to wear, how to address guests and most importantly how to engage with the dragon lady. Lola walks back in the maids’ closet in anger.

CLIFF

I am a writer. I have the power of life and death, of creation and destruction. With a stroke of my pen, I can summon a pirate so dread that the navy of the British Empire quakes at the mere mention of his name. With a few words, I can tell you of a love so sweet, the angels themselves weep for its beauty. I can call forth armies, tornados, earthquakes, and floods. I can build a bridge to the stars.
And yet when the cat pukes on my bedroom floor, I’m the one on my knees scrubbing the carpet.

NORVAL JOE

The company picked their way through the twisted and bloated bodies. Some had limbs torn from away, others were headless, while many appeared to have merely dropped dead.
Spleen giggled and sniffed as he lead the company down one grizzly street after another to a hovel tucked in the back of a narrow alley.
An old man shuddered beneath a blanket in the corner of a single room shack.
“There was power in their eyes. They only looked and strong men fell dead,” the man whispered.
“Ive underestimated our foe to have an army such as these demons,” Shareeka said.

RISH

“Lookee here,” Wade laughed when he discovered little Nathan in his room.

“Your door was open,” his brother whined, lowering Wade’s Transformers.
“My room’s off limits.” But Wade hardly needed an excuse to terrorize his brother. He enjoyed his power over Nathan, relishing the fear in his eyes.
“Headlock or deadarm?” Wade offered, grinning.
“No, please–”
“Deadarm then!” proclaimed Wade, pummeling Nathan’s shoulder. Nathan wailed, and Wade ran for it. He was hiding in the cellar when Mom reached her crying son.
Hearing her calling, Wade ducked behind the waterheater. Nobody would find him there.
“Lookee here,” the boogeyman laughed.

PLANET Z

French philosopher Voltaire once said “With great power comes great responsibility.”

And then he was shot in the streets of Paris by a fleeing purse-snatcher.

His niece, the famous author Marie Louise Mignot, wept over him as his lifeblood flowed into the gutter.

She began dressing up like some kind of spider-creature and jumped around, throwing handkerchiefs at criminals.

“SNICKT!” she’d hiss, and then she’d make a wood-engraving plate of the scene for The Daily Harpsichord, where she worked as engraving-plate engraver.

Two years later, a mad surgeon threw an octopus at her, and she fell off of the roof.