The next weekly challenge topic is: Superhero
LIZZIE
The man looked at him sideways.
“What’s up?”
The man didn’t reply and looked away while scratching the rust out of the bench with a pocket-knife.
“You new here?”
The man shrugged.
“Better be careful.”
The man had one eye. The other was white, empty of life.
“Do you have a carrot?”
“A carrot?”
The man nodded and waited.
“That’s how I lost my eye.”
“Are you looking to lose the other too?”
The man grinned a toothless grin and walked away.
“A carrot… Creep. They’ve opened the doors at the funny farm again. Hope no one dies this time.”
LISA
An Open Packet Of Wafer Thin Ham Two Months Past It’s Use By Date.
Layers of sticky grime had built up over years on the door. Lizzie added fridge to the endless list of items for the dump. As she opened the door, the smell hit her like holiday heat when you leave the airport. The whole house had an odour, unpleasant and pervasive but this was something else amid the lumpy milk, liquid carrots and inexplicably her Mum’s purse. She knelt with a bin bag, sliding the contents into it with her nose covered, remembered coming home from uni, and her joy at seeing that fridge, very much cleaner, crammed full of treats.
RICHARD
Japan: The Reality.
Wafer-thin walls and overwhelming summer heat.
That’s what I say, when people ask me about my time in Japan.
I could say more… The crazy traffic, crowded streets, awful cheese, long working hours and the barely-concealed unconscious racism towards anyone who isn’t Japanese, but none of those really bothered me. Somehow, I accepted that as part of what it meant to live in Japan.
But, some things were just too much to bear.
Oh, and haiku.
I could never master that damn thing. I’ll stick to hundred word stories!
The wafer-thin walls;
Overwhelming summer heat.
Japanese torture!
TOM
Not Providing Appropriate Adjustment
Jack was odd. Markly off centered. You could say he was missing one important thing or he was burdened with one maladaptive trait. One could say he was a wafer-thin creepy. How he entered a room, how he joined a conversation of his peers, even if was just walking pass you in a hall, you feel a sense of peril. And wasn’t just adults. Dogs and cats would go ballistic, small children would weep. I tried my best to at the least be surface friendly. That was until the day of the hard black rain. The day Timmy mysteriously disappeared.
SERENDIPIDY
I’ve never been much good at slicing vegetables; I’m always in too much of a hurry. No matter how hard I try, they always come out uneven and messy. Certainly not fit for dinner parties and entertaining.
So I bought myself a mandoline: One of those razor-sharp slicers that proper chefs use, and it revolutionised my kitchen. Now my carrots are wafer-thin, every time.
But, for my latest dinner party, I was running late, and rushing again.
I’d sliced my fingers off, down to the knuckles before I realised.
Nobody noticed the added ingredient.
And it tasted great.
NORVAL JOE
Billbert bit his lip and thought about what the girl had said. “Oh. You mean you have my friend, Linoliamanda.
The girl sneered, looking truly horrifying with hair the color of rust and teeth the color of carrots. “Call her what you want. If you don’t come with us, she’ll be called a memory.”
Sabrina tugged at his sleeve and whispered, “We should run. I think we can outrun them.”
The boy said, “You’d have to get through us first.” He grabbed Sabrina by the shoulders.
She sighed. “I guess he has a point. We probably better go with them.”
PLANET Z
The first time the Creep in the big grey hoodie walked into the grocery store and stuffed bags of baby carrots into this pockets before walking out, nobody saw it.
But after a few days of this, a guy stocking the produce section noticed him, and he got on the phone to the manager.
Too late to stop him from leaving.
Soon, hundreds of stores were reporting similar thefts.
Corporate told managers to have parking patrols watch the doors, and eventually they caught the carrot thieves.
Meanwhile, over in countless dairy sections, the real thieves had stolen all the eggs.