Welcome to the 100 Word Stories podcast at podcasting.isfullofcrap.com. I’m your host, Laurence Simon.
This is Weekly Challenge Number Two Hundred and Eighty-Four, 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 Coffee
And we’ve got stories by:
Thomas
Paladin
Chris Munroe
Tom
Gideon
Abernathy
Jeff
Zackmann
Danny
Norval Joe
TJ
Planet Z
And if you want to spam your social networks with this episode, use the Share buttons at the end of the post.
Thomas
The waitress set our coffee down. We both poured the cream and emptied the sugar packets into the hot brew, stirring and banging the spoon on the rim of the heavy, white mug. Ted dropped his spoon into the cup, and it disappeared. He fished around, and couldn’t believe what he saw. He dropped the salt shaker into the cup. Whoosh. It was gone. Then I dropped some coins and more utensils into the cup. Whoosh. Ted dropped in the bottle of Tobasco sauce and the little, sugar packet holder. Whoosh. We were at the home of the bottomless cup.
###
The coffee enema was the low point of our stay at the Golden Globes Spa in West Hollywood. As the attendant gathered the equipment, she joked, and asked if we wanted cream and sugar. My girlfriend chuckled. I didn’t think it was funny, because taking my morning brew in the keester from an old Mexican woman wasn’t appealing. We signed up for aromatherapy, salt glows and the loofah scrub. The attendant left us, perturbed, as I was grumbling through the whole procedure. I didn’t notice the little Mexican flag sticking out of my behind until I got up to dress.
Paladin
It was coffee. Just coffee. Later it might be a dark crowded room and a great silver screen. It might be a long stretch of empty highway and wind blowing our hair back. Perhaps soft murmurs and nervous, anxious, eager exploration. Maybe somewhere private. Maybe somewhere public. The ending may come in mere minutes. Or some hours. Or several years. It could end in this cafe or on my doorstep or hers, or on some porch in some future. But the beginning is here, with coffee. Just coffee.
Chris/Munsi
I’ve had three cups today, and I’ll hit Starbucks on the way to work.
Latte, I think. Venti.
There’ll be a pot waiting when I arrive, and when it’s gone I’ll honestly try to remember to start a fresh one. It’s inconsiderate to drink it all without replacing it for my coworkers.
It’s just hard to remember things sometimes. Gets harder every day.
I hate the taste of coffee, it’s like hot tar in my mouth. But I’ll choke back as much as I can.
Because they come when I sleep, and there’s nothing I can do to stop them.
Tom
We at Black Tie Industries are proud to announce an addition to our beverage line. The power of chocolate, the calming effect of caffeine and the sure pleasure of cocaine the chemists of Caleb Consortiums have chained the best of these along a running chain of CH3s to give you Chocolate flavored Cocaine Coffee. Get twice the stuff you need to get done in half the time. And all with out losing that mild awareness that the collective forces of the universe are conspiring to ruin your life. CHocoCoCo in the 64oz can, have two, or get left in the dust
Gideon
I interviewed for a job with a software company yesterday.
I think I did well on my part of the interview.
At least well enough for Joe, my prospective boss, to start selling me on the company.
He explained the well designed benefits package and gave me a tour of the offices,
At the end of the tour I had one question, “Where are the coffee machines? I did not see one during our tour”.
Joe took me back to the cubicles and pointed, “See?”
Yup, coffee. Delivered via IV tubing to every cubicle.
I’m going to like it here.
Abernathy
Stumbling into the kitchen, Willie greets the coffee pot with sleep crusted eyes. It’s where she keeps the instant coffee now. She doesn’t brew her own java nowadays. She had turned into a lazy person at fifty four. The coffee a symbol of her life now. Instant. She needed the ritual of having a cup or five. She ran the kitchen faucet until it became considerably hot. Scooped out two tall mounds full of the instant and stirred them in her cup. Tossed the spoon into the sink brimming with dirty dishes, Drinking down the the coffee and her failures.
Jeff
I sat quietly, legs folded awkwardly, and focused my mind on the Zen koan.
As much as I tried I could not untangle the meaning hidden within the simple words. I even tried not trying by focusing my mind on the various muscles of my body; using that intensity of concentration to empty my mind in hopes of reaching sunyata.
I complained to my teacher that emptiness would not come and he reminded me that I need to unfocus and concentrate on nothingness. Seeing my frustration he mumbled something about samsara and endless suffering.
I punched him in the throat.
Zackmann
“ Why did you buy that, you don’t even drink coffee?” she said.
He replied “Was it not you who asked me to go to the After Coffee Day Sale? Since they switched to thermos style coffee makers at work they have less coffee makers that I have to worry about being neglected and starting fires. I was amazed at how long the pots kept drinks warm. Of course unlike work we will not need two dozen Thermos coffee pots.”
“Dearest when you put a hot thing it a thermos in stays hot, cold things stays cold, how does it know?”
zackmann
Back in the late seventies the Canadian government spent millions to see if extreme amounts of coffee could give a person superpowers. They chose a child and gave him so much coffee he that he became know as The Encaffeinated One. As you may suspect he did not gain superpowers but he became weird. Well he did not actually became weird as obsessed with weird things and interesting ideas. He also had an urge to share them with the world. The young man first discovered the wonders of radio then podcasting.He now lives at The Weird Show dot Com
Danny
“You’re STIll drinking coffee? AT THIS HOUR!?!? The sheer volume of her question imposed the unreasonable state of mind she whipped herself into. My girlfriend was hell bent on blaming this self-imposed state of mind on yours truly. Unwilling to accept fault for my addiction, I responded curtly, “What!? I’m only on my 4th cup of coffee today. I fail to see what you are getting yourself so worked up about!” In hindsight, at 2:30 in the afternoon, I probably should have responded differently, since I was on the brink of finishing my 4th pot of coffee. Oh well.
Norval Joe
“They’re following us,” Esmerelda Flinch, supposedly of the Women’s Trade Federation said. “We need to throw them off your track.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Fly Paper Boy asked.
“The cops,” She said, “They’re on to you. When we pass through this tunnel, we’ll slow down, you jump out and run down the hill to the cafe and wait for us. It may take some time, and you’ll need to stay on your guard and ready. So buy some coffee and stay alert.”
He jumped when told to, and ran, off a cliff and plummeted toward the jagged rocks below.
TJ
Ellen from Chicago, Tanya in Baltimore, Amber from… Surrey. Oh, just
up the road here… wait. Surrey.. ENGLAND? *dials Hi, eMusicalChairs?
TJ here. I’ve been looking at these suggested matches and I said I
wanted matches within 30 miles of here. “Are you really willing to
overlook the love of your life if she’s more than 30 miles away?”
*slurps coffee I dunno, are you really asking me to define a metric
you’re going to then proceed to completely ignore? “But for optimum
compatability you may need to…” I’ve done the long-distance thing.
Narrow these search parameters please. Thank you.
Planet Z
The best part of waking up isn’t Folger’s in your cup.
There isn’t any best part to waking up, really.
Especially when the ship’s navigation computer thinks we’ve arrived back home and we’re in the middle of deep empty space.
The Cryogenic Bends hurt like a motherfucker, no matter how many green pills you take or algae packs you suck on.
Every move, every thought, even just sitting still is agony.
Try doing four-dimensional astrogation by hand on top of all that.
Worst of all, the only coffee is in the terraforming module, waiting to be planted on Earth Two.