Welcome to the 100 Word Stories podcast at oneadayuntilthedayidie.com.
This is the Weekly Challenge, where I post a topic and then challenge you to come up with a 100 word story based on that topic.
We’ve got stories by:
MUNSI
Coping Mechanism
By Christopher Munroe
I’ve been bottling up my emotions, for later sale.
Because, at the end of the day, nobody’s buying actual products anymore. We buy emotional connections, experiences and nostalgia for the emotional connections and experiences of our past.
I’m simply more honest about it than most, selling my own emotions directly to the consumer, no product involved, just raw, unprocessed feeling to enjoy at your leisure.
Which emotions in particular? Depression, mostly, from a lifetime of issues I never managed to resolve.
Which should come as no surprise.
After all, I’ve already admitted that I tend to bottle up my emotions…
LISA
Delivering so much more:
He found her although he lives the other side of town, only comes every other day now. Not many people use him, preferring to pick it up when they shop.
The familiar sounds of his approach. A chink of glass bottles followed a hum of the float. A wet cough from decades of Capstans. He noticed what we didn’t. Monday’s milk still there on her well swept step.
Just doing his job he told us later at her hospital bed.
Hadn’t hesitated.
Elbow shoved the door to find her fallen, bruised and dehydrated still holding the note ‘No milk today.’
RICHARD
Secret of my Success
People used to tell me that if I could bottle the secret of my success, I could make a fortune from selling it.
That was before I made my fortune – oddly enough though, they weren’t far off the mark. It just goes to show that from humble beginnings, with hard work and dedication, and a keen sense of business acumen, anyone can be successful.
Who would ever have thought that Grannie Heinz’s tomato sauce would ever have been marketable? Yet, I saw its potential and bottled the stuff…
And that, in simple terms, is the secret of my success!
TOM
When You’re All Alone
Jack was hitting the bottle pretty hard. Jill had left him for a foreign guy. He was taking it rather badly heading for rock bottom. Benny suggested a 12 step, but Jack just kept throwing down poppers. “She’ll be back,” he sang into his glass. Well you would have thought it quite improbable but Jill after being jilted by that foreign guy showed up on Jack’s doorstep. “Jack can I come in,” she said swinging the door inward. Gingerly she made her way over the drifts of empty bottles to where Jack sat. Sadly the bottle had already taken him.
SERENDIPITY
Just one bottle left now, such a shame. My father’s home made wine wasn’t that bad at all. Sadly, now that he’s gone, this bottle is all I have left of him.
I silently raise a toast to him, before draining the glass.
Later, as I tipped the last few drops into my glass and savoured the end of an era, I pondered on what to try next.
Maybe I should do away with mother too? I’m sure she’d ferment well, and I’d get a good few gallons from her too…
I’m pretty certain she could be a great vintage!
LIZZIE
“And a bottle of wine,” he ordered. “You’ll love it. Super expensive.”
She didn’t drink. He knew it but didn’t care. He went on to talk about his expensive new suit. Didn’t he look smart, he asked, scanning the restaurant for familiar faces.
“This is the best place in town, very hip, super expensive too. Oh, hey, Vincent,” he waved hellos left and right, turning his back to her.
When she walked away, he didn’t even notice it. And now he had that super expensive existence all to his radiant, perfectly pathetic self. And she was free. Wasn’t life grand?
TURA
Bottle
———
I love building ships in bottles. They’re nothing like your great-grandfather’s. I design them on the computer and fabricate them with a 4D printer, with intelligent microrobots to play sailors setting sails and mounting broadsides.
But I shouldn’t have set my two latest bottled galleons side by side. They started fighting, and one day I found the bottles broken and the crews missing. Trouble is, the microbots are powered from the house induction charging loops. The off switch is inside the house. And they can access the machines that make more robots.
Maybe I should just burn the house down.
NORVAL JOE
Dashing among the trees of the hardwood forest, Mickey leapt to the first branch within reach. In no time he was swinging from branches, almost flying across the tops of trees. Finding a comfortable spot, high in a maple, he waited for his former captors to stumble through the underbrush below, search in vain, and return to their hideout.
As the night drew on Mickey knew he needed a warm safe place.
In the nick of time, he found a dilapidated cabin with all the amenities of home; a moldy blanket, a package of ramen, and a bottle of water.
PLANET Z
Why is it that Guinness tastes so much better when you get it on draft at an Irish pub than when you buy it in a bottle at the store or in one of those stupid special cans with the plastic block in it?
Well, instead of carbon dioxide, a proper Guinness tap uses a mix of Nitrogen and carbon dioxide.
Also, the tap is specially-designed for stouts.
Finally, the keg at the bar is probably fresh, while those bottles in the back of your refrigerator have been sitting there for years.
Do you need a ride to the hospital?