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:
(It’s International Cat Day!)
LIZZIE
He put his glasses down. The letter had arrived. He half-expected it to be what it was. He didn’t expect it to be that bitter though. What hurt him the most was when she wrote she felt like yelling to the world he was trafficking women into the colony. He was, true, but still… it hurt to see it written down on paper. The lawyer told him she was trouble. But he loved her so much, he didn’t have the heart to kill her. He trafficked her to L-028. It cost him a fortune, because they don’t like humans there.
RICHARD
#1 – Taxonomy
There are few creatures as bizarrely named as the Iridescent Mango Butterfly, which is neither iridescent, nor does it have any connection with the mango.
Also, it’s not a butterfly at all – it’s actually a small, brown, incredibly venomous snake.
Many explanations have been proposed for how a snake could have been so badly classified, but none have been entirely satisfactory, and no one really knows for sure.
I have my own pet theory: I think it’s what that snake wishes to be called… And with something so venomous, nobody is stupid enough to argue the point with it.
#2 – Traffic
My eyes kept darting to the meter on the dashboard, and I cursed the heavy traffic.
This is what you get for waiting to the last minute before leaving for the airport. I’d forgotten the rush hour traffic, and now not only might I miss my plane, but it was going to cost me dear.
I ignored my phone buzzing in my pocket, and – thoroughly fed up – told the cab to stop, and headed for the nearest bar.
I’d get the next flight.
It was only then that I remembered…
I had everyone else’s passports in my luggage!
CHARLIE
The meter would record the impact delivered by the bumper as I bashed the obnoxious pedestrian for bellowing as he blocked my truck. Although he wore an iridescent stripe on his sweatsuit, he ran, carelessly, into the crosswalk from the left.
The goon made an opulent gesture, standing in the crosswalk, and in my path. His mango-pumpkin latte clutched in his hand, he screamed and ranted.
I popped the clutch, hitting him at groin level, breaking his hip and smashing his nads. I slipped away in the dark and bought a big breakfast after washing gore out of my grill.
#2
I suffer in goon traffic twice a day commuting to school. Goon traffic is composed of people that try to grab an extra ten minutes of sleep or five more minutes of makeup or application of hair products.
I rigged a windshield wiper pump to a small hose running through my back bumper. I hit the motor button if anyone is tailgating, and squirt a quart or so of cooking oil mist in front of them.
The oil mist covers their windscreen, and fails to go away when they try to use their window washer. Wetting it makes it worse.
#3
Billed as the OPULENT MANGO, Lulu commanded the stage at Club Bugassi. Lulu could do things that would shame the dancers at The Blue Fox in Tijuana. Sailors on liberty would flock to the Bugassi.
Lulu started her career when she was only sixteen. She lied about her age, and constructed an elaborate backstory that included being left an orphan.
Don Demarco, the club manager, tried to take advantage of Lulu, but she rebuffed his advances and reminded him that she had friends in the mob that would smash in his face and cut off his schwantz if he continued.
TOM
South of Congress
I knew this guy name Mickie who loved to bash parking meter with a 16 pound sledge. Guy had biceps the size of melons. One swing, baam! Kids would follow after him to gather up the spray of Municipal Piñatas. When it got too damn hot on the south side Mickie would open a fire hydrant. You’d think his career would have been curtailed by the local gendarmeries, oh contraire mon ami. He ran and won a seat in city council, Alderman Mickie they called him. Got all the park meters removed and got four community swim pools built.
Just a breath away
Lilly was a most unusual child. A quiet grace and a searing sense of propose. Her secret garden was a local haven for hordes of butterflies. “Do you hear that?” She would ask of selected visitors. Most would smile, give fanciful accounts of an ethereal natural. Few passed the initial test, so few survived the attack of a million butterfly wings. The song she sang to her flock was sweetness dipped in daggers, she called it her Iridescent Yell. Then she would giggle and add it was an invitation to supper. You have no idea how voracious an appetite a butterfly has.
SARAH
How very apt that this a ‘birthday bash’!
It is, after all, your birthday and I am going to thoroughly enjoy giving you a good bashing.
It’s your own fault… You really should have invited me; and the look of disdain you gave me when I arrived made it clear I was an unwelcome guest.
So, I’ve waited until now with your gift. Don’t you just love party games that see you locked in a dark cupboard with your nemesis?
So yell all you like – no-one will hear.
And let’s see how you like your new baseball bat!
JON
Sea Song
By
Jon DeCles
Oh, rock me in the deep, where the big rocks sway beneath their coats of green and slimy moss, the cool cold deep where the fishes dream and the crabs click their claws and the shrimp make little popping songs while the big whales moan happily about their long journeys, sharing the up and down of their deep scales with the up and down of their swim, big back fins propelling them until they break and blow and steam like geysers on a rolling landscape where all is water and there is no rocky ground: rock me like a whale.
Hating the Nasty Parking Meter
By
Jon DeCles
With an iridescent yell, Alice the Goon bashed the parking meter again and again. She stood in fury beside the stream of Hollywood traffic, wondering how, on a night when the Moon was as opulent and gibbous as a celestial mango, anything could be so totally frustrating. Popeye had given her all the change from his pockets, but none of it fitted in the little slots.
She looked more closely at the coins.
The pictures were all wrong. They seemed to be from the State of Las Vegas. She started to bash again, then decided to drive back to Toontown.
JEFFREY
The Big Game
by Jeffrey Fischer
Traffic was horrendous to the big game but, after parking our RV, we made it to our $200 nosebleed seats in time. I went for food and drink. The only line that wasn’t two-dozen deep was the health food kiosk. Health food at a stadium? Whatever happened to nachos and $15 gassy beers? I bought a pair of mango-spinach smoothies in iridescent green. My companion took one look and started yelling at me. I sucked on the straw and spat out the viscous liquid. My team lost by three touchdowns. They don’t make big games the way they used to.
NORVAL JOE
Here’s his first story:
Axel stumbled back to the family’s cube. His parents were in the living room, eating dinner.
His mother looked his way as he entered, and said, “I didn’t synthesize your dinner. I wasn’t sure when you’d be home.”
His father didn’t look away from the Entertainment Screen.
Axel stood a meter away from his parents, and they couldn’t see that he’d been beaten within a hair’s breadth of his life. He wanted to yell and jump up and down, just to get them to acknowledge his existence. It wasn’t worth it. He would just find some other place to live.
And here is story number two.
The invasion began so small, and unnoticeable beneath the awareness of most of the humans, that by the time they realized the creatures were upon them, it was too late.
First one, then another, then more and more until thousands joined the first wave of intruders. They crowded the streets, bashing into fences and walls. Stopping traffic as they made their way to the center of town, howling and barking, and gnashing their vicious teeth on anything but one another.
They left as suddenly as they had come, and no one knew why. They were, after all, only wiener dogs.
LAIEANNA
That meathead Max flipped his shit again yesterday when the parking
meter sprung “time expired”, startling him as he passed. Using brute
strength, Max tore the device out of the ground, waving it wildly at
traffic as he yelled. A volks was bashed before I could come to the
rescue with my iridescent mango. Its sparkle and shine caught Max’s
attention. The big goon followed my opulent fruit off the streets and
I led him home where I handed the jewel over to pacify his lunatic
rage. I still had plenty left over in my bag for the art showcase.
DUANE
Iridescent Mango
The rise of Iridescent Mango is like any other electronic rock band. The opulent lifestyle. The bashing up hotel rooms. The fighting with the paparazzi. What few people know is that the band was a cover for an evil scheme hatched by the lead synth player. While the audience was enjoying calming rhythms and synthetic melodies, hired goons would be at their homes rolling their electricity meters forward. By the time anyone noticed, the band was long gone with a cut from the power company. Yet this was just to cover up their illegal trafficking in My Little Pony collectibles.
PLANET Z
I remember the first time I heard of The Goon Show.
I was a preschooler, wandering through the public library, looking for books about Popeye the Sailor.
I’d wandered out of the Children’s section and found a book that had “Goon” in the title.
Goons were those weird monsters in Popeye, right?
I opened the book, but instead of Popeye, it was a bunch of words and some photos of three old men around a microphone.
I put the book back and kept looking. Eventually, I found a book about clowns.
Well, one clown. Named Pennywise.
I never slept again.