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:
CHARLIE
Most of us enjoy surprise endings. The biggest majority of us like happy endings. Some ask for it all and want happy, surprise endings.
What is a happy, surprise ending? How about an example? I suppose it could be a problem that you think you cannot overcome. You do overcome and it’s a surprise.
As the year draws to an end, I would like it to end with acceptance, beauty, ideas, kindness, justice, love, music, solutions, dancing, equality, freedom, good, vision, unity, wisdom, peace, transformation, consciousness, acceptance, respect, non-violence, harmony, and a stock of natural peanut butter in the cupboard.
RICHARD
Spoilers
There are few things worse than having the ending of a movie or a good book ruined by someone, before you’ve seen or read it. It seems some people are oblivious to the notion that we don’t want to know; whilst others take a malicious pleasure in randomly dropping spoilers into a conversation.
For me, much of the enjoyment of a story is the anticipation of what the eventual ending might be.
And that’s why I spend my days in the library, meticulously tearing the final chapters out of books.
Because, without their endings, no-one can spoil the readers’ pleasure.
LIZZIE
Up the stairs into a new time. It’ll be difficult, it’ll be difficult, I mutter. I know it well. I have climbed many of those stairs, slowly and steadily. I may stumble often, I know I will, as I always do. Sometimes, it will be my fault. Other times, well… But I keep looking at each step and climbing those stairs. I never give up. It’s not in me to give up. I would’ve done it a long time ago, I suppose. But I didn’t. And now, I keep looking up and moving forward, from one ending to another beginning.
TURA
Endings
———
It has been told how the gods created Man, when they were yet young.
Man came and passed, and his existence was the briefest, tiniest spark of light amongst everything that the gods made, each more magnificent than what came before.
But at last, the gods themselves grew old.
“All that we can do, we have done,” one lamented.
“All that can be, has been,” said another.
And so they came to an end.
* * *
“Look, how pretty!” said the little girl. She pointed to the jewel that had grown overnight on the tree.
“Yes,” said her Father. “It is perfect.”
TOM
The End in Near
Samuel Russell excelled at up-endings stuff. These up-endings tended to drill down right into the center of the time/space vortex. After his seminal work on the grand unification solution, he withdrew from the world. Some said he took up surfing, other said he enter a Tibetan Monastery, still other said he opened a hot dog stand somewhere in Strasburg. Actually he set up a tiny lab in the basement at CERN. Created a God Cloud by up-ending a matrix of Higgs boson. When the tiny galaxy took shape in the utility sink Samuel Russell slowly backed out of the room.
SERENDIPITY
Endings come in many different ways.
Some are noisy, messy affairs, full of violence and pain; some go quietly, with barely a sign another life has passed.
Some are planned and premeditated; some, unforeseen accidents and twists of fate, then there are those who simply shuffle off their mortal coil – just the natural order of things.
But we can’t have that.
A proper ending should be full of drama. It should be compelling and disturbing, an event that grabs you by the throat and screams in your face!
And that’s where I come in…
The beginning… of your end!
JEFFREY
The End
by Jeffrey Fischer
I hate endings. They are mawkish and go on too long. There’s the feeling of having overstayed one’s welcome at a party, fixing a last drink while the hostess is rinsing out the dishes. “It’s been too long.” “Oh yes, we must do this again soon.”
So I’ve short-circuited the process. When a guest becomes tedious, I operate the trap door into the soundproof cellar. Yeah, I know that only moves the problem one floor, which is why my assistant is stringing you up by the neck. Don’t worry, the fall will surely snap your neck and kill you so we can move your body out the trade entrance. After all, we don’t want our guests hanging around too long, do we?
NORVAL JOE
I don’t like change. Once I’ve gotten used to something, I want it to stay that way.
Consequently, I hate endings.
The end of relationships, the end of the school year, the end of a calendar year, the end of youth. When a child grows up and moves away, when a favored pet dies, when a family member passes away, the final episode of Phineus and Ferb. Moving to a new house, selling an old car, even replacing worn out furniture.
So, I’m a hoarder. Stacking up books I won’t reread, and piling up unused toys, dysfunctional relationships, and memories.
DUANE
Endings
The suspects had been gathered in the study and I prepared to name the guilty party and make the big arrest. I presented the clues and in a dramatic conclusion said, “Therefore the only one of you with means, motive and opportunity was… the chauffeur!”
The butler jumped to his feet. “The chauffeur? Are you kidding me?”
“But I was certain it was the gardener,” shouted the maid.
The cook stepped forward and motioned for silence. “Okay, okay. Everybody just calm down. Who picked the chauffeur in the pool?”
The chauffeur looked around the room and slowly raised his hand.
PLANET Z
The Washington Brothers broke into retirement communities and yelled that they were the Ghosts of Kwanzaa Present
The Ghosts of Kwanzaa Future would kill anyone that called the cops.
They got jewelry and cash, but not as much as they wanted.
So, they cased a drugstore, thinking they could fence some expensive prescription pills.
The robbery didn’t end well. All three, dead from police gunfire.
Mama Washington screamed racism and tried to organize a Black Lives Matter rally.
But she got her heart pills from that drugstore, and a “prescription error” landed her in a grave next to her boys.