Weekly Challenge #333 – Red

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 Thirty-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 Red.

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

• Rails Bailey
• Thomas
• Tura
• Shruti
• Tom
• Jeffrey
• Lizzie
• Guard 13007
• Munsi
• Serendipidy Haven
• Zackmann
• Botgirl
• Monday Jinx
• Cliff – Uncle Monster
• Bonchance and Sevi
• RedGoddess
• Norval Joe
• TJ
• Steven the Nuclear Man
• Planet Z

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:

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RAILS

There’s a red under the bed was the catch cry of the cold war, I looked under my bed and all I found was dust and the odd half chewed sweet. Where was the red under the bed. I turned the bed clothes upside down, and inside out, still no red in the bed.

So much for propaganda, there was no red under my bed, the Government were lying or maybe hiding the elusive red under their bed.

I slept more soundly when I didn’t find that elusive red under my bed, but wondered who’s bed he was under.

THOMAS

The Red Scare hit high school in the fifties, when Red Buchanan transferred from his school in Oklahoma. He was a buck-toothed, burr-headed, cretin with a chip on his shoulder, and filled with the self-generated fantasy of being a cowboy. The nearest Red ever got to beef was at Jack In The Box, where he stuffed his big, stoopid (sic) face with burgers three times a day. He carried a knife in his cowboy boot, but when he needed it to clean fingernails or play mumbledepeg, he had to remove his boot. This negated all the coolness of having a switchblade.

#

It turned bright red and in a week after it appeared, it spread further, until it exploded into a spray of even more intensity. The patch of Chinese opium poppies were all volunteers, propagated by the birds that live in Thomas’ Wild Animal Park and Sanctuary. He waited until the petals matured and fell off, then scored the pods, waiting until the seepage flowed. He collected it, dried it, then brewed the tea so popular with his Uncle Kenny and the graphic designer next door. The electric meter reader was bribed with some product so he wouldn’t turn him in.

#

“Roses are 700 nanometers, violets are 400.” Jonnie was a clever little guy, and was in the advanced placement physics class. He wrote his first poem for his classmate, April, hoping to impress her with his knowledge of light and wavelength. Functioning at the highest level of Asperger’s Syndrome, Jonnie could only relate to autistic students or teachers that were appropriately trained to deal with “special” students. Misunderstood and teased by other students at Roosevelt Junior High until he opened his own software company when he was nine, selling it to Google for cash and stock when he turned eleven.

#

The Ketones played nightly at The Red Moon. Smooth as silk, they did all the fifties tunes that we slow-danced to. More ladies were impregnated in the parking lot of The Red Moon than in the town of Port Hadlock. The Ketones practiced on street corners for a couple of years. Then, around 1958, they ran into a couple of guys who also sang on the corner: Eddie Montgomery, and Frederick “Money Guitar” Jones. Jones a lefty, taught himself to play a right-handed guitar held upside down. Earl Poppindeau, played the bass, and Tommie “Three Balls” Johnson, was the percussionist.

TURA

“Mummy, what’s black and white and red all over?”

I sleepily turned over and looked at the clock. Three in the morning. Jack wasn’t there, he must still be up working, again. “Go back to bed sweetheart,” I murmured.

“What’s black and white and red all over?” she repeated.

“I don’t know, what *is* black and white and red all over?” I said, playing along.

She didn’t say anything.

“A newspaper?”

“A book?”

“I have to show you,” she said, at last, in a small voice.

Jack wasn’t there. I didn’t hear him typing. I silently whispered, “A suicide note.”

SHRUTI

For a change she was quiet. The woman had driven him to bankruptcy with her demands of jewellery in exchange for love. He had been angrier with himself rather than her after she left. He had let her take him for a fool.

He hadn’t come intending to hurt her. All he wanted was what he had paid for. Her refusal had been her downfall.

He let the blood drip down the knife’s edge creating a pattern on her neck as it went. Rubies had been her favourite and he thought it justified to adorn her with the red necklace.

TOM

Lester Patterson was a cautious man. Drove with hands at 10 and 2. Heavily insured, multiple 401s. Lived on a cul-de-sac on the side of a cliff. Worked for a branch of the government, in an office that hadn’t seen a layoff since the Taft administration. He attended a non-descript flavor of protestant church, weekly. A totally reasonable person in everyway but one, he loved The Wager. This said you might think Lester was a gambler, far from it. The man only wagered once a year, at a single casino, at one table, only one bet. A thousand on Red.

JEFFREY

The Girl in the Bikini
by Jeffrey Fischer

I put down a folding chair and a bucket of beer bottles and set up my umbrella on an unpopulated stretch of beach. Mostly unpopulated, anyway: a young woman lay out in the hot sun, working on a nice, even tan. She had slipped off the straps of her bikini top to avoid tan lines and was now luying on her stomach. I picked up the new Brad Thor thriller and started reading.

Four beers and three hundred pages later – that guy knows how to keep the pages turning! – I looked up. The woman hadn’t moved in several hours. I assumed she had fallen alseep. Maybe it was the beer talking, but I placed the book on the sand next to me and yelled, “Oh my God, a shark! Run for your life!” As I hoped, the woman woke and rolled over, exposing her breasts as her top fell to the sand. She grabbed a towel and glared. “You bastard!” I shrugged. “I thought you’d want that sunburn to be applied evenly.”

It’s true that she beat me mercilessly with my book, but her yelps of pain each time she whacked me showed it hurt her more than it hurt me.

LIZZIE

“He said go,” protested the soldier holding a gun.

“No, he said take your time,” replied the other soldier.

“He said go.”

“He said take your time.”

And this continued for half an hour.

“Are you done?” asked the sergeant suddenly. “Get going. Now!”

The soldiers jumped the side of the trench and started moving, still fussing about the orders, not paying attention to the whistling war around them.

It was fast, it was painless. Their lives and their disagreements were now part of the past.

Their families would receive a letter of condolences. It would be stamped in red.

GUARD 13007

A red LED turns on, then blinks twice and turns green. A whole board of lights goes on and off haphazardly, and there is a whirring noise in the dark. A floodlamp flickers a few times and goes out. Several LEDs turn red.

There is a hissing noise and a set of chemical lights activate, revealing a hibernation pod in a foggy green glow. The hatch squeaks open and the occupant looks around. He pulls the hibernation equipment out and slowly sits up.

He looks at the wall of LEDs, a few green, most are red. And there is blood.

MUNSI

RedRum

By Christopher Munroe

I finally bought myself a bottle of RedRum.

I figured it’d provide material for stories, going forward. You know, unexpected deaths, scrambling to hide bodies, the whole thing. Something pun-based yet horrific.

Disappointing.

Nobody died, no horrifying revelations, overall it was an uneventful night, drinking Rum and struggling to write.

I may have overdone it. Rum’s never agreed with me, and putting down the whole bottle was probably unwise.

Now my head’s pounding, I’m queasy and I can’t focus my eyes. I’ve never had a hangover this bad in my life! It hurts like mur…

Oh! I just got it!

SERENDIPITY

She has eyes of startling red.

It’s never bothered me in the slightest, but it seems other people are oddly freaked by it.

“Vampire?”, they ask… “Some sort of medical condition?”… “Is it some bizarre body modification thing?”

Why do people always have to leap to the wrong conclusions, coming up with crazy ideas when it’s actually nothing much? There’s no mystery, at all – just ask her and she’ll explain – it’s really very simple.

She just has very bad aim – and lip gloss has always been a bit of a struggle.

You should see where she puts the eye-liner!

ZACKMANN

Fiendship is Magic
“So sweet yet so foolish for you to come into the woods with me.
Pinkypie did you think it was strange when I asked if I could tether
you and bring you out here all by yourself.”
“No, it was fun when Spike did it and we tried a bunch of stuff from a
book Purity was reading.”
“Bet you wish Fluttershy told you she has an evil sister. After I tie
you to this tree, I will cut you and use your red blood to summon….”
“Oh No do not summon Discord” interrupts Pinky
“No, silly I’ll summon Garaaga”

BOTGIRL

We look across the room and meet each others’ gaze. Deep dormant trauma stirs, rising and morphing through layers of thawing emotion until it surfaces masked and cloaked.

We oscillate from pole to pole, emotional magnets flipping between attraction and repulsion; love and hate; benevolence and jealousy; anger and sadness; connection and isolation.

Marionettes on invisible strings, we dance until we are entangled and bound. If numbness does not prevail, we descend back through the depths. To the pain and grief hiding beneath our rage. And the terror cowering in the heart of our desire. Silently praying to be healed.

MONDAY

He never got past the antiquated idea from the decade of greed, that red was a power color. He wore red ties and drove a red car. He wrapped his pathetic crotch in red bikini briefs further stoking the fires of his own ego. He came home from work and announced red letter days to his wife whom, incidentally, he felt could go a bit heavier on the rouge and lipstick. His drink of choice was Campari and soda, a blood orange monstrosity pronounced with annoyingly elongated Massachusetts vowel sounds. In short he was a true, world class douche bag.

CLIFF

Almost missed it this week. Today was the last performance of our play. By the time I got home, I just wanted to fall into bed. Then, at the last minute, I remembered that you were counting on me. I don’t have the energy to record it, but here are my thoughts on the prompt of RED…

Modern fire engines sort of a sickly yellowish color. I guess I’m a traditionalist. I like the old red fire trucks. I loved to see them racing down the streets. When I was a kid, I would stand on the curb, waiting to see them roar past me on the way to douse a blaze. The bigger the blaze, the more trucks I saw. When a house burned, they’d send three. When the school was destroyed, there were a dozen trucks from around the county. No one ever noticed that I always knew when they were going to show up.

BONCHANCE AND SEVI

Impossible!

Mirella looked at her violin, the same hue
of red as the violin in that movie.
How she wished she could play as sweetly as
it’s previous owners. Impossible!

There was only so much the public school system
could do, Mr. Peppa the music instructor told her mother.
Special training was required.
There was an extraordinary music
camp that summer, he told her the cost.

She watched her Ma lower her head in shame. Impossible.
Her fingers traced the outline of her prized gift.
Mirella sadly began to play Edelweiss repeatedly.
Each rendition better than the last. Anything is possible!

The Scarlet Letter

Sarah spread the ironed cotton t-shirt on the table. Red paint ready to
color the pencil traced calligraphy.
The crimson shade would pop on the crisp white.
The letter “B” for Bully would be the only letter, the scarlet letter.

The box was addressed to her so called best friend.
The hand written note would be her final response to her cruel words.
She ended the letter saying, wear this with pride.

The knife gleamed bright in the sunshine.
Tears streamed down her face as the cold steel cut through her alabaster wrists.
Her splattered blood signature tainted the t-shirt.

Pablo

Pablo was angry and seeing red. He finally found his son, Pepe.
He found him in the back of a funhouse caged and covered in blood…not his own.

Pablo brought his new friends to help distract the workers in the building.
There was Sparkles, the vicious calico kitty, attired in a beautiful velvet bow.
He was accompanied by the other recently released puppies as they made the distraction in front.

Molly and Maggie-(the twin wiener dogs), were doing their part by waddling wildly through the funhouse.
Pablo sent Pepe home, then went to the front to lend a helping paw.

REDGODDESS

Lola can’t believe she’s been working the swanky hotel for three years. It makes her sad to be such a natural. Lola lost her high paying job, on her 35th birthday. Instead of a tenth year celebration or an anniversary plague she found herself crying in the rear corporate parking lot. Since then, Lola has learned to treat herself to red every pay.

The first week was a lipstick, than a red toy soldier, her favorite was red gloves meant to compliment a scarf from Morocco a guest gave her. She thinks about her past, but is thankful for Red.

#####

In Lola’s world, a poor lower-class black world, making a living wage is a far-fetched dream. Living requires her to make at least 40,000 dollars a year. It just isn’t there, and when it is, there are over 300 applicants every time. “I’m so lucky to even have a job.” The globally warmed world is growing colder. Outside the fancy hotel rich people speed walk their puppies past a sleeping homeless woman. Lola fills a red bag with food and toiletries to place by the forgotten woman. Maybe Lola does have a livable wage, since she is still LIVING.

NORVAL JOE

In a small circle, their backs to each other, the company feebly slashed and stabbed at the endless flood of goblins who climbed over the bodies of their dead companions in their continued assault. Without notice the creatures scattered from the killing field.
Owen looked at his goblin-blood stained arms, black, not red and gasped, “Does this mean we won?”
“I don’t think so,” Flindert sighed.
Screaming hysterically, Spleen burst from the woods and ran toward the company.
With the booming of shattering trees a giant red demon, four times the size of the half-goblin, launched itself into the clearing.

TJ

After two months and $2,500, we moved out of the little red room at Ellen’s. The process of becoming a first-time homeowner put me in nine different addresses over the course of five months while I looked at five different homes and put bids in on two. I dealt with seven different bankers and three circles of hell watching helplessly as circumstances over which I had no control played major roles in the decision-making process as to whether or not me and my bf would have a place to live. Finally, matter resolved. Second night in our new home. Heaven.

STEVEN THE NUCLEAR MAN

The clouds of the morning sky glowed the same red as the drying Russian blood on Istvan’s fur. He glanced at Janos beside him. The younger man bared his teeth. They both shifted to full farkasform, loping on all fours toward the safehouse.

Janos had the speed of youth, emerging from the alley just before Istvan. Istvan heard the hiss of steam a moment too late for his friend. Silvered blades sliced into Janos’ body. Istvan skidded to a halt, just far enough forward to see the Russian steamwalker begin to stand and ready another volley.

Istvan ran.

For now.

PLANET Z

Galileo said that Mathematics is the language with which God has written the universe.

Geometry is just one of his many dialects, and some shapes are more holy to him than others.

For instance, the octagon is known as The Eye Of God, and every octagon is a window through which He watches over us all.

Yes, all of those stop signs at intersections mean that God is watching when you don’t come to a complete stop.

But not at red lights.

Those are The Eyes Of Satan, and if you listen, you can hear The Devil whisper “Floor it!”