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Welcome to the Weekly Challenge Number One 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 selected by Tom, and we went with Oil.
The excellent theme music is by Guy David
VOTING
Go ahead and listen to them and then vote for your favorites (multiple selections are allowed):
ANIMA
FAMILY MATTERS
Hiya Castor, I can’t talk, I’m getting ready for a date….
No, it’s not Hamgravy
No, not Brutus …
Not the sheik…. No, it’s not the movie producer… Eww not him – he was too greasy…
This guy’s soooo handsome, He’s a sailor! How I love a man in uniform…
I AM NOT A SLUT! That’s a terrible thing to say about your sister…
Yes, yes….I will tell Cylinda… yea, you still love her…. You really need to get over
her, big brother… how ’bout I set you up with one of my girlfriends?
YOU WOULD NOT GET A DISEASE!! You’re awful!!
BRAD Z
The Sam n Ella Calamity — Oil Issues
A dark viscous liquid dripped slowly into a large pool that had formed beneath the craft.
“Found the problem, crack in the crankcase.”
“Can you fix it?”
“Might take a while, I’ll need that oil can from the storage closet.”
“Ummm.”
“Umm what, we need the can in order to go.”
“The safety inspector removed it.”
“What!”
“Didn’t want to contaminate the area by accident he said.”
“We’re so screwed”
Vibrations reverberated around them as a herd of brontosaurs ran through the valley below.
“Maybe we can squeeze some oil out of them.”
“You know that’s a myth right?”
GUY DAVID
The sailor was suspended 20 feet above the deck in a cage. He recognized the growth on the banks of the sea, so he started swinging the cage, trying to get to a certain plant. He succeeded in cutting a piece of the plant with his pipe, but failed to catch it. It fell straight down where the thin tall woman caught it with her mouth. Immediately, her muscles flexed and she flew into the air, Matrix style, and landed the sailor a sucker punch. “Good one” laughed Bluto, then he strolled towards the sunset with his beloved Olive Oyl.
STEVEN THE NUCLEAR MAN
Jim nearly bounced in his cleansuit and waved the rest of the lab
over. He pointed at the display, where the genetically modified
amoeba was eating a grey dot and excreting a small black drop.
Everyone cheered, except Sandra. She was new, and was still learning
names and projects. Jim saw, and his gloved hands grabbed the
shoulders of her cleansuit.
“I’ve made an organism that eats plastic and excretes oil! It’s a
perfect recycler! The shortage is over!”
They were all so excited that they missed the black drop running down
the edge of the lab’s plastic air seals.
TOM
Little Earl loved oil. Probably got it from Big Earl or maybe Old Earl. In the panhandle the people say the oil is in the blood. If it was in there Little Earl hadn’t a clue. He was only six and the gurgling black crude that set his progenitors’ hearts a fire wasn’t the color that delighted his young heart. Little Earl drove Big Earl crazy asking when it was going to rain. “When it comes we’ll all go down to the Kmart,” said Old Earl. Little Earl loved the oil puddles in the parking lot. They made rainbows.
EVAMOON
She turned in bed and glanced at the clock. 3 am. She sighed. Why hadn’t she listened to her mother’s warning never to fall for a sailor? Always out on that rickety fishing boat and he barely made enough to feed his family. But there was always enough for his habit: That evil green weed. She’d begged him to give it up, but he kept sucking down can after can of his “spinach.”
She thought of running off with that dark-haired man who was always after her.
“Oh stop,” she scolded herself, “Olive Oyl, you know you’ll never leave him.”
THE GREAT HITES
And not a drop to drink
“Albert! You aren’t drilling another well are you?”
“Ma, you know we got to find some. We are going dry here. It is about darn time we had our own supply.”
“But Albert, you ain’t had nothing but bad luck with that in the past, and look at the state our yard is in.”
“This time will be different.”
“That is what you said the last few times and look where it gotch ‘ya.”
“Would you please lay off ma?”
“No, we need water to drink and all you keep doing drilling is oil.”
THOMAS MERKEL
“Whoa, what did your mother feed you?” Justin said to Melody, his new baby.
“What the?…” he thought. “Note to self. Next time I get a hazmat suit.”
Gently wiping her bottom, he calmed her while stating the obvious, “Clean and dry.”
He surveyed his surroundings. Babies need way more stuff than I ever imagined. Just stuff. Baby powder…baby wipes…baby lotion…and baby oil.
“Baby oil!” His thoughts raced into overdrive.
She just wanted a massage. Right. One thing led to another and… Voile!
Baby.
Those bottles should really come with a warning label: “Caution: Can cause babies!”
JUSTIN
The necromancer raised his robed arms, gnarled hands pointing towards
the void between stars. Purple light snaked from his mouth with evil
incantations. The purple light encircled headstones. Earth acquiesced
to rising dead. Dusty moans and bony chattering marched towards the
stronghold.
Bony soldiers advanced, bones creaking, arrows loosed from the walls
of the stronghold. The shafts passed through ribs or glanced off
hardened skulls. By magic, they climbed the walls. Boiling oil was
poured, covering the skeletons. The bones were turned black and the
old joints ceased creaking. They sealed their doom by unwittingly
creating black, silent ninja skeletons.
ALMO
“Well, that’s the last barrel,” said one of the last two employees at the last oil refinery on Earth. “That’s all there is.”
“The people from the Smithsonian will be here soon to collect it,” said his partner, inhaling the gassy aroma for the final time. It brought back memories of tigers in your tank, winged horses, shells.
“So, what do you want to do while we wait,” the first man asked.
The second got a manic teenage grin.
They siphoned 20 gallons from the last barrel of gasoline that would ever be and they practically sprinted toward the Camaro.
HOUSTON
The jet black slicked back pompadour of Vinnie’s shone with its
brilliant luster. It was his pride, his source of power.
The other Jets used to tell him if an Arab could sink an oil well into
his hair they could pump out enough oil to run Jersey for two, three
years. Exxon had nothing on Vinnie Baggodonuts and he and the other
Jets ran wild and free in the streets.
One dark night in Brooklyn, the sharks caught him outside his turf
after dark, and with a shiny new Zippo they lit him up like a Kuwaiti
oil well.
CRAIG
I turned the bottle on its head, gurgle gurgle is all it said.
Receiving it’s taste I give thanks to the Italian mystery.
Olive oil in my veins swirling then merging with life.
I’m insane in my big leather chair pouring Carapelli down my chest.
The oil spreads out pooling in my lap, slowly covering jeans in green.
Olive oil in my veins becoming my life, but not my wife.
Drip, drip, the IV serves the earthy elixir, slowly eons of dust circulates in my heart.
I become one with the peasants, skin wrinkling, vision waning, mouth drying.
Olive oil.
PLANET Z
They followed the Yellow Brick Road out of the fields into the forest.
“Oil! Oil!”
Dorthy and the Scarecrow stopped.
There was a man made of metal by the side of the road. And in his hand, an axe.
“What should we do?” she asked.
The Scarecrow looked the man up and down.
“He’s made of tin,” he said. “Let’s haul him to the salvageyard.”
The Salvageman of Oz paid them fifty bucks.
“Fifty bucks!” she laughed. “We sure aren’t in Kansas anymore!”
They took a cab to Emerald City, avoiding the big pussy and sleepy field of poppies altogether.