Welcome to the Weekly Challenge Number One Hundred And Fifty 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… was…. um…
It’s The Stinking Rose.
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
“Ow, what was that for Charlie?”
“Because your ugly and you smell bad,” he pushed her down, laughed, and ran.
Rose brought her six year old dirty knee stinging to her chest. Silent tears rolled down her rosy cheeks as she sighed. She still loved him, no matter what.
“Make the photo shoot for eight tomorrow morning. I have to do an interview with Glamour,” Rose hung up the phone.
Rose checked her email. Another Facebook friend request, her tenth of the morning.
‘He Rose its Charlie, we should hang out sometime.’ Rose smiled as she pushed the reject button.
Fricker
Even though I told her I was sorry about forgetting our anniversary, she was so upset that she actually tried to castrate me. She had this look in her eyes just like a crazed Jack Nicolson from The Shining. Kitchen shears tightly gripped in one hand she said …”You come home late smelling like smoke and cheep perfume and all you have for me is this stinking rose! “
She leaped towards me to claim her revenge as I cupped my family jewels and ran for the nearest escape route … snip! “Now let’s put this rose in some water” Whew!
Justin
My father always told me that when things get busy and hectic in daily life to take time and smell the roses. I always took this in a more metaphorical sense. Just take a moment to stop and enjoy life’s beauty. My father passes away and while preparing the funeral and the estate, things got very busy. I was working on the outside of his house, feeling a bit flustered. I saw his rose garden. I went to it and took a big whiff. They smelled terrible! That’s how I came to learn that my father fertilized them with beans.
Jeffrey
Juliet: O, be some other name!
What’s in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;
As it turns out it is not as sweet, we renamed the rose and what we came up with is well, not so pretty. We have but a small amount of time left, in which to transmit this warning. When the station was renamed it seems to have awoken and angered the spirit that resided here. Oh by the heavens! Stay away!
Juliet:Yea, noise? then I’ll be brief. O happy dagger!
This is thy sheath
Houston Keys
Dear Muscle Armed Paper Boy,
I am over you and you can keep the stinking rose you didn’t send me. I
thought you were different and we could spend long hours sitting on
the front steps sucking on popsicles from the cellar. I daydreamed we
could be friends (very close, special friends). I have found another
muscle armed MAN who can make me feel like the person I am inside.
You just stay away from me. And keep your dang paper you sumbitch.
Your special friend forever.
Love,
Herbert
There, it’s done, come sit on my lap.
That tickles.
Michael P
People tend to overlook the details in fairy tales. They see a prince
fall from Rapunzel’s tower into rose bushes to be blinded by thorns.
They see an old hag-turned-beautiful enchantress turn an arrogant
prince into a beast, leaving a single rose to mark the passage of
time. They see a prince presenting Cinderella with a rose after her
foot fits perfectly into the glass slipper.
They don’t realize that Rapunzel is the old hag. That Belle is
Cinderella’s step-mother. That it’s the same stinking rose, over and
over. That there is only one immortal, unaging prince.
Anima
I hate him!
Honey, what’s wrong? Not going to the dance?
That stupid boy Wolfgang. I hate him, and I hate it here! I want to go back to California. I’m 17, and you’ve ruined my whole life. I coulda stayed with aunt Julia to finish school, but you “wanted me to broaden my horizons…”
Look at me! It’s senior prom, and I’m dressed like an extra from the Sound of Music. Look at that! My corsage… All I wanted was one stinking rose, and Wolfgang brought me garlic!
You’ll adjust dear; they just do things “differently” here in Transylvania.
Guy David
I was standing at the edge of known space. The grid lines where extremely beautiful. I knew that was it, I was going to jump right into reality. I was going to smell a real rose. I made it, half expecting to disappear in a cloud of pixels. The contraction I built converted me into a real person in the real world. I could feel the real breeze on my face. I found a flower shop, which I entered. I picked up a single rose and smelled it, exhaling deep. I wrinkled my nose in disgust. The rose was stinking.
Michael S
I was chained to the floor as punishment for my repeated offense. I stood in the center of the room listening as the valves opened followed by the sudden rush of sewer water filling the room. In a matter of minutes it was waist high and rising. I was sickened by the disgusting things floating on top the water as the stinking rose to within inches of my mouth and nose.
“Have you no mercy,” I screamed.
“I warned you about that toilet seat time and again,” my wife said.
There was my answer. There would be no mercy.
Tom
The strangest job I ever had was driving Carol Doda between San Jose and San Francisco. I’d get her to the KCSC studio for her on-air editorial. She’d finish, turn sideways, 44 inches of bust line would swing cross the TV monitor. We’d jump in the car and fly up Highway 101 for the lateshow at the Condor Club. Carol had a thing for garlic gorgonzola we’d stopped at the Stinking Rose just before showtime. 33 years later whenever I’m in the city I walk by her historical marker on Columbus and Broadway, head up the street for some gnocchi.
Norval Joe
The smelly rose powder told Johnny his mother was going out even before he saw her wearing the dress that showed too much of her legs.
“Don’t go out, Mom. Stay home and watch a movie with me.” He begged.
Anger flashed momentarily in her eyes. “You know Mommy needs her medicine. My friend, John, said he can get some.”
There was a knock at the door.
“Go to bed by Ten. I’ll be out pretty late.”
Johnny saw a grubby hand with dirty finger nails grasp his mothers arm as she left the house.
Johnny went straight to bed.
Elisson
The Count stood, his full height looming over Van Helsing. No escape… and yet the fabled vampire-hunter stood his ground.
“Doctor Van Helsing,” intoned the Count in a quiet voice that carried the accent of Transylvania. “I almost regret that I must kill you. You have always been a worthy opponent. A gentleman with a boutonnière!
“What kind of flower is that, anyway?” He leaned in for a closer look…
…and was rewarded with a squirt in the eye. Dracula screamed in agony, his body dissolving into a thick mist.
“It’s a rose,” replied Van Helsing. “A stinking rose.”
Sophie Shores
You tell me you adore me. I giggle.
You adorn me with lovely gifts, I am touched by you.
When we’re together you tell me how happy I make you.
You say our love is very special.
I’m only twelve but I know you are not like any of the boys at my school.
Our love is secret.
Now it’s over an you’re gone forever.
As your casket is lowered into the ground, I throw the stinking rose on it.
I watch my mother as she weeps for her lost lover.
I hear whispers you were poison.
Lynda
My wife, bless her, was such a romantic. You’d never know it to look at her when she’d start throwing things and feeding me stuff to aggravate my gout, but she always went on about this rose some guy gave her on their first date.
On our fortieth anniversary, I bought a rose and put it right in the middle of the bed for her to find. She never mentioned it. I just figured I got it wrong.
When the movers took the washing machine what do you think was on the floor with all the lint? That stinkin’ rose.
Lance
“What is that stench?”
“My latest creation.
Cross the common tea rose with the Venus Flytrap, a little genetic
tinkering, lots of growth hormone, and voila!
A sentry plant large enough to handle armed intruders.”
“It smells, Doctor.”
“True, it takes several minutes to extract its roots from
the ground, but once free it can remain mobile for up to an hour.”
“But why does it have to stink?”
“Huh? Oh. Legacy of the flytrap DNA. You see-”
“Arrrgghhh!”
Thwack! Thwack!
Groan.
“Don’t take it so hard, son. This is the perfect chance to test out my new
limb regenerator!”
Planet Z
She’s gone.
She was my Father’s Aunt Rose.
Her husband died years ago. They didn’t have any kids, not many friends.
Quiet and kept to herself.
In the suburbs, they say that kind of thing after a guy flips out, shoots a bunch of people.
But in the city, old… retired… alone… and you’ve paid your rent a year in advance, it can lead to something else.
No, they didn’t find a stinking, dessicated corpse when they kicked the door in.
The place was empty.
She’d sold everything and moved to Cancun. Told nobody.
Where she is now, who knows?