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:
LIZZIE
Smart Move
The winner would be announced later. It was obvious that the blue boat had won, but they’d announce it later.
To announce something obvious, with great pomp and circumstance, hours after the event ended was confusing. But Peter believed there was some sort of live event logistics that determined that, until… he saw the crew looking rather suspicious.
He stormed over to the mic.
“There’s a lot more than people in that boat…”
The police rushed to the stage. Peter was arrested. The crew of the blue boat hurried away.
Smart move to traffic dope right under everyone’s noses.
CHARLIE
The architectural firm ran a worldwide design contest in Japan. The entrants were to design a new, three story, pagoda for Yamaguchi.
The winner would have to satisfy a couple of primary constraints. Among them, the requirement that a rustic, unassuming and non-confusing façade depict a modest image of a traditional sword maker hammering and grinding a katana sword blank.
Patience and diligence was required, but Arthur Codpeace won grand prize.
He didn’t follow the strict guidelines and the inducements the Yakuza demanded. He was deconstructed with a Stihl chainsaw and buried in a fifty gallon crypt beneath the pagoda.
RICHARD
‘In the eye of the beholder’
“Rustic and confusing” – that was the opinion of the so called art critics attending the opening of my latest exhibition.
I thought they were rather rude. After availing themselves of the rather good free wine and canapés, I expected a decent review… It’s only common courtesy, in my opinion.
Well, I wasn’t going to stand for it, and having cornered the art editor for the Evening Standard, blocking his escape path, with the Chardonnay tantalisingly just out of reach, I pressed him to explain.
“It’s the tractors” he said; “as religious iconography, they’re confusing.”
Maybe he had a point!
SERENDIPITY
Cruel and unusual torture is a much misunderstood phrase. It irritates me that people always imagine the most dramatic and outlandish scenarios when the topic is mentioned. Cruel and unusual doesn’t always mean exotic devices, ridiculous settings, blood and gore. Real cruel and inhuman torture is about taking mundane, everyday circumstances and giving them a twist; subtly grinding down your victim, until you’re left with a pathetic husk of a person, with no hope, and no will to live.
It takes great patience, but it works.
Like sitting in a dentist’s waiting room, for hours…
Now that’s cruel, and unusual!
TOM
Changga Trot
Rustic Pagoda was a K-Pop girl’s band out of Seoul. Lead singer was Kimmy Kim Park. Serious set of pipes on that smurf girl. The bass player Pearl Dive ripped up the bottom end while lead guitarist Mindy Max pounded out Anthem Stadium Power cords. The band had more drummers than Spinal Tap. Got tired of reprinting press posters so the new sticks girl was just called X. Margret Wong doubled on Sax and keyboards. She wasn’t Korean, but it wasn’t like the audience was sentience enough to notice. First band from Korean to broke into Billboard’s top 10.
TURA
Rustic pagoda
———
A traveller occasionally notices my rustic pagoda and stops to pray at the shrine. I may then come out and speak with him. My priestly wisdom is but simple, for I have not put in the level-grinding to become a great sage. I prefer this relaxed life after my previous one as a mercenary captain in the Hundred Years War. I had a glorious run of things, although in the end I was hacked to death on an obscure battlefield. But every life ends in failure, which is to say, that it ends. I am already considering my next one.
NORVAL JOE
Linoliumanda ran to the bedroom door, pressing her ear to it. “Silent as a crypt.”
A confusing evil grin spread across her face.
She locked the door.
Billbert gulped.
Linoliumanda turned on the radio to mask the grinding sound as she opened the bedroom window.
“Come on.” She climbed through, onto the eaves. “Let go flying.”
She wrapped her arms around him from behind and Billbert lifted off over the houses of the rustic neighborhood. Her body was warm against his back as the cool air rushed past.
“We have a half hour before dad comes to check on us.”
JEFFREY
The Proposal
by Jeffrey Fischer
The restaurant had a certain rustic charm and a menu with enough French words to confuse the average diner. Add to that a pianist playing traditional French songs in the style of Liberace and prices that nearly required a home equity loan, and one had the perfect locale to pop the question. Between dessert and coffee, Bryan scooted back his chair, fumbled in his jacket pocket for the ring case, and dropped to one knee.
Jessica sat transfixed, a look of horror on her face. “Bryan, no…” Too late. Bryan ran through his well-rehearsed lines. The poor fool even took her shaking head as a sign of acceptance. She fled to the ladies’ room and called a cab to meet her at the restaurant’s rear entrance.
PLANET Z
Unlike other crypts, Billy Arthur’s crypt was built in the style of a Japanese pagoda.
It was a delicate affair, surrounded by cherryblossoms and gardens and koi ponds and other fancery.
Billy had always dreamed of such tending such a beautiful garden.
But in his endless quest for money and power and fame, he never had the time to take a break and enjoy all he’d accumulated.
He died young, leaving instructions for he crypt and pagoda and gardens.
The people who come here to rest and relax and take photographs, to them, he’s just a name on a plaque.