Welcome to the Weekly Challenge Number One Hundred And Forty-Nine 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… was…. um…
It’s Mothballs.
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):
Danny
Ricky the mouse had light brown fur and oversized pink ears, he hated
them, but his wife found them adorable.
He would scurry about during the night, gathering scraps of food, and
bits of cloth for his wife and two baby daughters. They lived behind
the clothes dryer, it wasn’t much, but it was home.
Ricky also had an adventurous side to him, and while exploring the
attic, he came across a dead moth next to a delicious trinket of
cake.
He took the cake back home, where the mouse family feasted on the
funny smelling and tasting morsel.
“Hey Jim, how is your mouse problem?” Steve asked.
“They’re gone man, it is like they up and died.”
Lynda
The apple falls from my hand as the familiar smell brings it all back to me,
Stewie Norton fumbling with my blouse in the dark, the pawing of his grandmother’s cat at the door.
Nearly given away by the meows of a tabby.
I pick my fruit up off the floor of aisle seven with one last glance at the box of mothballs next to the Yahrtzeit candles under the mop display and turn away from my dark, dirty past.
Things were so much simpler then, no courtship, just a quickie in the closet.
Young love behind old men’s suits.
Guy David
The old man smelled of naphthalin. I could smell him all the way to where I was standing. I lighted a cigarette and moved towards him. He wrinkled his nose at me and pointed at the sign. “No smoking here” he said. I shrugged, puffed a cloud of smoke at him. At this he started couching and sneezing. Snot came out his nose. I lighted him with my cigarette lighter. As his overcoat dissolved by the fire I could see many naphthalin mothballs dissolving in his pockets. “So, that’s where the smell was coming from” I said through his screams.
Norval Joe
In South Africa in 1927 a political cartoon appeared in the news papers showing the ghost of a serviceman walking across the the waves of a beach, and on the beach a soldiers tin helmet with a bullet hole in it with the word forgetfulness underneath. The picture was titled, ‘The Tin Hat’. The country was moved to create an organization to remember and support veterans and their families and formed, ‘The Memorable Order of Tin Hats.’ The buildings where they held their monthly meetings became known as M.O.T.H. Halls. Their annual gala events with music and dance, MOTH Balls.
Ashley
President elect Ronald Reagan awoke abruptly arose from bed and quickly dressed in robe and slippers. Upon entering his personal office, he sat and picked up the telephone.
“Please connect me with Navy Secretary John Lehmann. Thank you,” said the president waiting patiently.
“John,” began President Reagan, “I apologize for calling so early. I may have an idea for the cold war problem. I agree that the navy must be built up. Let’s start by recommissioning and retrofitting the Iowa class destroyers. Yes, they’re currently mothballed. Listen carefully John, start gathering support. We’re about to spend some serious taxpayer money.”
Justin
I found an interesting Asian book in my grandparents attic. My grandmother is full-blooded Japanese, my grandfather married her after World War II. She brought many things when she moved to America. When I was young she taught me Japanese.
I’m walking in a circle under a bare lightbulb, reading. I can’t seem to move away, even though the light is too harsh.
As I examine the pages, realization comes.
It claims that if you eat an animal’s testicles, you will gain its powers.
I chew on an old sweater and wish I had read that before eating those mothballs.
Anima
Thor sweetie….
Here’s your list of honey-do’s: The screens need to be taken down at
Bilskirner, and doesn’t your hammer Mjollnir have autoreturn on it? It
is still by the front door where you tossed it when you came in. And ,
please, please put out some mothballs around the garden. I read in the
Godesses Home Journal that the naphthalene has some effect against
snakes. Maybe then we will be rid of Jormungand. The humans are
complaining he is putting a squeeze on Midgard…
Ja, you betcha, Sif. I’ll get right on that…
Doesn’t she know it’s Ragnarok this weekend?
Tom
My Aunts in-laws owned the apartment building she lived. Her family lived on the second floor. His parents lived on the first floor. Everything in my aunt’s apartment was ultramodern, Scandinavian design, color TV, the works. The Dulles’s apartment was like stepping into a time machine. Bathtub with feet, lace doilies on Reichsdeputationshauptschluss upholstering, tintypes and the most confusing antiquity “mothballs” “Yahh” said Augie ” Dayst coom from the real big moths.” Lizzie slapped Augie and muttered something is Swabian. She also had to slap my brother Lenny in the head to dislodge one he popped in his mouth.
Caleb
Frank got into the funeral business because he loved cock. Murder or grave robbing was too weird even for him but nobody requests a bottomless open casket, so he could eat as much cock as he could harvest.
As he cut the pants off a young suicide he was shocked to see the boy was a eunuch. There was plenty of mouth-watering man meat but no scrotum. As frank wiped his mouth he realized. The boy hadn’t jumped off the roof to kill himself, he was drawn inexorably to fly toward the full moon by his little teensy moth-balls.
Freak.
Planet Z
Cast aside for videogames and action figures, Raggedy Ann and Andy gave up on society.
They sealed themselves in Ziploc bags filled with mothballs, determined to sleep through this modern technological obsession.
After a thousand years, the seal on the bag broke, and Andy was yanked out of his plastic cocoon.
He opened his button eyes to see:
A dirty hand.
A ragged child.
A face, covered with scars and scabs.
Giggling. Laughter.
Would he be treasured? Loved?
Andy’s cotton heart sank as the child threw him to his dog.
His shredded body would lie in pieces among Ann’s tatters.