Welcome to the Weekly Challenge Number One Hundred And Ninety-One, 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 Hat!
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):
Norval Joe
It looked like Santa’s hat, red velvet, trimmed with white rabbit’s fur. When the boy plucked it from the ground it felt rubbery and floppy, like wet leather.
Unthinking, he sat on a log in the forest glade, and placed it on his head.
He dreamed of fighting dragons. He rescued a captive princess. He aided the sick, fed the hungry and sheltered the homeless.
When the fungus on his head finally dried and crumbled to dust the hallucinogenic effect of the narcotic spores dissipated.
He was an old man, then.
There was a new king.
Nothing had truly changed.
TJ
“I found him!”
Sentox wurbled over to the console where a subordinate monitored 95 active blips representing tagged humans across the large central continent below. Or, rather, 96. Farjox Elbatia #03942/H5, or Herbert Weigel of Mott, N.D. – or rather, the red blip that represented him – had reappeared on the monitor.
Sentox furrowed his brow. H5’s signal was weakened from when he fell off the radar three years ago. So Sentox ordered an away team be deployed to install a booster suppository.
They were about to secure his tag when the blip suddenly vanished. Curses! Herbert had replaced his tinfoil hat.
Justin
The rocks filled the tunnels behind me as I slid into the dark mineshaft.
I felt around the dirt and rocks and found a helmet.
I put it on my head and felt for the light switch.
I flipped it and unbelievably it illuminated the ghosts of the miners who’d died working and toiling here.
Blind to everything but the ghosts, they led me down a series of shafts to a lift that I used to pull myself to the light.
When I looked, I was alone again.
I lowered the helmet back into the shaft to rest in peace.
Lynda
One December, I forget how long ago, a hat fell from the sky, right in front of me. It was one of those freaky red and white ones the guys at the mall wear when they get sadistic and want to be peed on by hysterical kids.
At first I was worried a bunch of reindeer poop was going to follow, but it never did.
I didn’t know what to do with the hat, so I took it home and now every year I wear it while sneaking into kid’s rooms to give them books and coats. I get arrested.
JRadimus
I re-awoke at the shock, ice-cold water mixing with warm blood and sweat. The pain that knocked me out re-awoke as well. I winced. I fought to open my eyes against the swelling. It was pointless: the light was in my face; everything was shades of black.
“Put your hands through the armholes.”
“Why?”
“So the fire ants can bite you.” – “No? OK. ‘Or else’.” He back-handed me, then squeezed my cheeks, forcing my broken jaw open. I winced again.
“Whaih?”
“Ah – Because…” He slid a forceps between my toothless gums, grabbed my tongue and pulled. “You insulted my hat.”
Zachmann
My cousin got a new hired hand named Jeff, who never took off his hat. This drove my cousin’s wife crazy at the dinner table and she almost refused to feed him but Jeff has so much skill in husbandry and horticulture that she decided let him wear a hat at the table. Jeff even wore his hat to bed. On day my cousin’s wife got too curious and took off the hat when the Jeff slept and under she found a head full gears and steam. Do tell anyone because it’s hard to find such a good farm hand.
Steven
My son puts on a newsboy cap, picks up a newspaper and his voice rings out: “Extra, extra, read all about it!”
I laugh, and he tosses the hat aside. He grabs a cop’s hat and waves a baton. A helmet, and he’s lowcrawling along the floor.
I see the fedora, but I’m not fast enough. Steel eyes gaze from under its brim.
“Couldn’t wait for the inheritance,” my father says through my son.
I stumble backward as my son, wearing my father’s hat and my father’s eyes, raises the knife.
“You never could wait,” he said.
“But I could.”
Jeffrey
I have a hat that I like a lot, but I almost never wear it out of the house. My wife says it makes me look like I am in a bad western. I think it makes me look like Jones, Dr. Jones. You know, Jr.
My kids all call me cowboy dad when I wear it, and that gets me to goofing of and saying things like, “Now you cow pokes get yerselves in the car before I have to brand ya.”
Which of course leads to my wife saying things like, “You’re a dork you know that right?”
Planet Z
Sleepy Hollow gets all the press, what with that Hessian maniac chopping off heads.
He’s gotten so popular, Salem’s complaining that nobody covers the witch trials.
Other villages hold festivals, carnivals; but they can’t compete with a monster on a horse beheading townsfolk.
Good.
You see, I’m the Headless Horseman’s agent. And his contract is an absolute gold mine.
At first, he just took panties and hats in Boston. Got branded as a pervert.
So, we relocated to the forest and tried a new tactic.
There was another agent here. Tried to sign him.
That head, I kept for myself.