Weekly Challenge #259 – “Contamination”

Welcome to the Weekly Challenge Number Two Hundred and Fifty-Nine, where I post a topic and then challenge you to come up with a 100 word story based on that topic.

The topic this week was Contamination

Go ahead and listen to them and then vote for your favorites (multiple selections are allowed):

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Tom

Rudy Nobonikov had been the medical director at Chernobyl. This is how he got the job at CDC. Rudy was a bit bored with radiation, wanted something a little more lively; so, he moved over to the biohazards division. Unfortunately the trance radiation in Rudy’s hands weakened the polymers in the Ebola Petri dish to the point they all shatter one sunny afternoon. To bad the Rudy effect as it was later called had the same effect on the Biosafety Level 4 outer seals. Some might say covering lab3 in tomato juice was bit of over kill, but it worked.

Todd

The relationship was pure and clean like white paint in the beginning.

Right off the bat we made a nice pastel from the drop of yellow we added from the last ruined bucket.

That tiny bit of yellow led to a swirl of brown distrust and a patch of jealous green.

A reaction of purple dignity produced a good portion of angry red.

The colors mixed into a puddle of dark goop. How do we get back?

We mix in the calmness of blue and the violet of sorry, but in the end, we can’t mix to white, can we?

AM Earley

You know those twelve compartment cupcake carriers. Our co-worker Jimmy brings his lunch in those every day. Since a certain number of employees have to “man the sales floor” it was months before Jimmy and I ate at the same time.

I then saw he had every section filled with a different ingredient. “Don’t laugh,” he sighed. “I’ve never liked food flavors contaminating each other.”

“Cool,” I replied. He winced at my stir-fry with noodles and sauce. I picked out several veggies and let the flavors dance in my mouth.

Or were the flavors “making love”?

David

“I’m not gonna eat it!”
Sophie slapped her hands across her mouth and shook her head from side to side. She continued to speak but they couldn’t understand what she was saying. She just mumble from behind her finger blockade.
“Honey, it’s fine. Three second rule; remember?”
They had just scrapped the cough medicine they had spilled on the floor into the medicinal plastic shot glass.
“Yeah, baby. Listen to your mother. We wouldn’t poison you like we did your sister. That was a total and complete accident.”
Sophie’s looked at her crossed eyed sister and screamed, “It’s contaminated!”

Zackmann

Is your computer contaminated with viruses and malware? Have you lost data that you can
never get back? Just call 206-666-5458 and then we at the Lawrence Simian Company will
travel back in time and make you back up copy of your lost files. We can also set your computer
software to automatic update and install your favorite antivirus software before it is needed.
We have a special and if you know who spammed you, we can kill his grandmother and he will
never be born. We don’t kill grandfathers due to the mamma’s babies daddies maybes paradox .
zackmann

A midget or diminutive person of the altitudinally deprived bought a monkey saying something
about not illegal in Florida since altitudinally was not the only way in which he was deprived that
make the monkey run away and climb a tree. The monkey was bitten by cat that had recently
eaten a rat that had eaten an ant infested candy bar. When the man caught the monkey it bit
him. Who knew that a JJ Campanella StarShipSofa fact article about zombie ants would be
about the ants whose consumption and cross contamination would later causes the zombie
plague in humans.

TJ

Into every life a little rain must fall. My own equatorial monsoon is my
wife, Martha, over there chatting up one of the new prospects, someone
in the science division I believe. She wears demure frocks to these
faculty events in deference to her father, but I notice she selects
older ones, ones that have grown contaminated with tightness during
their stay in our closet. There go the fluttering eyelids. Unless I
quite miss my guess I’ll be entertaining that young man and his
unsuspecting wife in my humble abode later this evening. I’m certain
Martha will see to that.

Chris

I was strapped to a chair when they left, shutting the door behind
them both. I gagged at the stench of rotting bodies; other victims.
Young and old, short and tall, we all end up here – some sooner than
others. It was to “control the population”. But it still sucks.

And what’s worse is the horrible stench. This room was called the
corrosion room because of the rotting bodies. The room is on a remote
island far from civilization to keep it a secret. The government
thinks it’s still a secret. But everyone knows that their time will
come.

Steven

I tried to cover it with cologne, that nasty musky stuff.

Onions.

Cigarettes.

Honey.

Soap.

No soap and patchouli.

Artificial flowers in ozone-destroying spraycans.

Cinnamon.

Garlic.

Tuna Helper casseroles you couldn’t get anywhere else.

Useless.

None of it worked. Not a goddamned bit of it.

You said you could still smell it.

Not when you were with me. You were fine then. But later, when the
other smells faded, then you claimed you could still smell the stench.
That you could still smell the decay.

Today I realized the truth. It’s not my zombie bite that’s infected.

It’s yours.

Danny

The disaster is over, only thing left is the wasteland left by the broken nuclear power plant next door. My dog dies in my arms from a seizure, but my government insists there is no contamination. My brother who works at the power plant has written me, accepting his death sentence attempting to save the area residents from exposure to radiation. My government still insists everything is o.k. I then succumbed to sever radiation poisoning as a result to my exposure to the contamination. I died. At my funeral, my government showed up uninvited, confronted all the mourners, and insisted everything is o.k.

Norval Joe

With newly dawning emotions he looked down at his rotting fingers and his fleshless forearms. He could feel the contamination inching its way through his altered veins. One of his few remaining teeth dropped from his mouth and rattled across the stainless steel work bench of his former laboratory. “I’d better keep that,” he thought. He thought, and thinking surprised him. He brought his hand up close to his jaundiced eyes and sighed. He could almost see the fresh new skin as it regenerated across the bones. He’d been bitten by a human and had been cursed with healthy mortality.

Planet Z

Wake up, Major Philips.

We’re done torturing you.

You’ve proven that our methods of interrogation are inadequate, and we congratulate you. The nuclear weapon codes in your head continue to elude us.

However, we’re still unclear on one thing: the difference between exposure and contamination.

Maybe you can help us with that? It’s no secret, right?

If we hold a solution of highly-radioactive Iodine mixed with water near your daughter, that’s exposure to radiation, right?

And if we make her swallow it, that’s… contamination?

Which is which?

Don’t try to speak. We have plenty of time.

Until she gets… thirsty.