Weekly Challenge #303 – Tunnel

Welcome to the 100 Word Stories podcast at podcasting.isfullofcrap.com. I’m your host, Laurence Simon.

This is Weekly Challenge Number Three Hundred and Three, 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 A.

And we’ve got stories by a lot of people:

Barbara Blackcinder
Thomas
Murray
Tura
Chris Munroe
Lizzie Gudkov
Tom
Zackmann
TREED
Guy
Botgirl
Bonchance
Chris the Nuclear Kid
Steven The Nuclear Man
Cliff
RedGoddess/TalkWithMarie
Danny Dwyer
Pamela
Norval Joe
Planet Z

And if you want to spam your social networks with this episode, use the Share buttons at the end of the post.

The more people see this on Google Plus, Facebook, and Twitter – the more explaining you’ll have to do with your loved ones, coworkers, and parole officers.

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Barbara

I wanted to explore the other end of the tunnel
So I squeezed into it and headed for the light
I knew it was the end because here it was dark
I ducked as I walked, pulled my elbows in tight
I crouched some more, tossed my hat back off behind me
Got down on my knees and made shorter steps
Onto my belly I crawled like a snake
Only to find at my arms furthest reach
My finger extended until I touched with a nail
I saw end of the tunnel was just a flashlight

Thomas

Professor T had tunnel vision. He had no peripheral vision at all, and he could only see one student at a time as they sat in the front row. He would always focus on Jezzabel because she wore a red sweater, and was very buxom. Students arriving late would sit on each side of her as they slipped into the room twenty to thirty minutes late. Professor T wrote on the board in a long, narrow, vertical column, squeezing his lecture notes into a space only a few inches wide, while the rest of the twenty-foot wide whiteboard remained vacant.

##

Roberto’s tunnel stretched from his yard, under his neighbor’s garage, and into Texas from his home in Piedras Negras. He used the tunnel to visit his girlfriend. It took him five years of digging, and his tunnel was lighted and secure. He lined the walls with concrete. Roberto liked his tunnel so much he began to spend time in the tunnel even when he wasn’t visiting. He’d take his lunch down, and began sleeping there. As time passed, Roberto invited his friends down. Soon, he added a sound system and bar. Roberto’s Tunnel opened last Friday, serving dinner and beer.

Murray

People know about some of the caverns that run under the city, but few know how far they extend.

Under the bustling streets, 350 kilometers of tunnels lay. Some lengths are a tourist attraction, filled with the bones of the nameless that cluttered massive cemeteries years ago. Some lengths have been sealed off and are now inaccessible. Warnings have been issued that the unsecured caverns are unsafe, and should be avoided. There is no light, no map, and nobody who can help those who venture in and become disoriented.

That knowledge still doesn’t keep me from screaming for help.

Tura

We step out of the cage a vertical mile down the main shaft, into a side tunnel cut by an autonomous minebot. It’s smart enough to decide for itself the best directions to explore. But it’s broken down, and it’s too expensive to write off.

We plod single file down its sweltering, twisting tunnel. The robots are programmed to avoid each other, but we find the bot’s rear end sliced off by another tunnel intersecting this one.

A sudden commotion behind. Something explodes out of the wall, obliterating one of my men. Something alive.

The surface is very far above.

Munsi

“See that light at the end of the tunnel?” Ben Affleck asked.

He was a professional, and he could do this. He was an actor, actors do their job without editorial, and he’d manage.

It just didn’t seem fair.

He owned an Oscar. An Oscar for screenwriting. To be reduced to dialogue like this…

But it was his own fault. He should’ve demanded a complete script, but he’d signed on to make the movie because Daredevil was awesome, and it was too late to back out.

It was time to finish his line.

“That’s not heaven, that’s the A train.”

Lizzie

“I understand nothing of tunnels!”

“I really don’t care, that is the challenge for the week.”

“But what should I write?”

“I don’t care. Just write anything.”

“Tunnel…”

“Yep, tunnel, go for it.”

“Cut-and-cover.”

“What?”

“Or clay-kicking, I like this one.”

“What on earth are you talking about?”

“Tunnels!”

“Oh, boy… She has just started doing these challenges and she is already going bonkers… she is hopeless…”

“No! Check it out. Here, look.”

“I don’t want to read that; get that away from my face.”

“Double-deck.”

“Shut up…”

“”Pipe jacking.”

“Shut… up…”

“Or box jacking.”

“Oh, shut up already!”

Tom

The bark banged into the shore. Burroughs, St Peter, and the Podcaster set foot on a sea of faces held fast in a mudflat that stretched beyond the horizon. With mics and mixers to a man this was the Plane of Podcasters threshold to hell. “Is that you son.” plead a face? “Dad,” said the Podcaster. “My dad’s not dead, you’re Norman Sherman. Bit me.” Across time and space a spark arched across the tunnel. The pads in the Houston bus suddenly released their charge and the unconscious passenger buck with the electrical jolt. Eye popped open. “WTF.”

Zackmann

When I was a kid my family went on a vacation and tried spelunking. When the tourguide said you had to climb down really far on a long ladder then the opening was four feet high, I ran to my mother who was waiting in our family car and said “I don’t want to die!” My siblings told me how much fun it was watching our father duck walk.
Oddly when I visited my father at work in the Transportation Building, I thought the tunnel between it and the Minnesota State Capital Building was the coolest thing since sliced bread.

Treed

Bob & Dave and the Tunnel of Love
by TREED!
Hey, Bob! Look over there!
Dave, what excites you usually causes me pain, so no, I am not looking.
But Bob, it’s a TUNNEL!
A tunnel?
Yes, Bob, a tunnel.
Is it lit? I mean, like have actual lights in it that are on? Or is dark?
Looks dark to me, Bob.
Then, no, Dave, I am not going there.
Well, can’t we just go look?
You go ahead, Dave.
Maybe it’s the “Tunnel of Love”? Hey! Bob, I see a light!
Dave, what’s that sound?
OH BOB! It’s the TRAIN OF LOVE!!
Dave, you are dead to me now.

Guy

Insanity must have drove me beyond all odds. I couldn’t see any light at the end, but I drove on. Visions on the wall might have been wrong, might have been true, but they didn’t deter me, always moving forward. My goal, my destination stayed hidden just beyond my reach. I carefully and methodically cleared obstacles as I came to recognize them, but more still came, revealing themselves as they came my way. My goal never came closer. I would keep on driving myself forward through this long wide tunnel. Nothing would drive me backwards. It’s the drive that meters.

####

She had the staff that metes, commonly known as the broom, and she enjoyed driving it through traffic tunnels. The rush of cars coming out through the other side, bumping into each other made her giggle. Getting rid of the evidence was a little messy. Usually it involved accurately targeted lightning bolts, directed at various witnesses, both in car and outside. She did enjoy the various commentators, both on television and in YouTube. She liked it when they called her “a force of nature”. It was when they started connecting her to the ozone layer that she gave up though.

Botgirl

We’ve been stuck in this so-called tunnel of love since 2110. It’s been dead and dark for fifty years now. Except for us. As the last living testement to human hubris, we’ve been cursed to spend the passing decades in this dank, dim place; our micro-fusion cores burning down far too slowly through the endless twilight.

We don’t know where you’ve gone, why you left, or if you’ll return some day. It’s just us. The biocybernetic miracles of the golden age. Calling out to you.

We’re transmitting live. So if you can hear this, Happy Valentine’s Day motherfuckers.

Bonchance

Milton plugged the network to his “printer”. The innards of the printer were removed. Installing a network tunnel and ghost bridge inside. Still on the phone, “And I said, I don’t care if they lay me off either, I told Bill that if they move my desk one more time, then I’m, I’m quitting. The firewall blocks my Oprah show and it’s not okay because if they take my Oprah then I’ll set the building on fire…I’m in the basement next to the furnace and can now watch Oprah in peace. Milton cleaned his desktop straightening the swingline stapler.

Chris

I walk slowly down the dimly lit cobblestone road. I turned a corner and gaped. In front of me was the world most vicious beast to have ever existed. The beast was as tall as a basket ball hoop, had a red eye and a gold eye. It is said that if you look into its third eye you burn and turn to a gold statue. But this one had only two eyes and a scar on its face. Then I realized why it had not moved. It was dead. I took a breath then i turned and walked away.

Steven

Plasma splashes against the ship’s hull; comm-carried screams dissolve into malfunctioning static. Sheila’s synthesized voice holds no emotion. “Shields have failed. Structural damage to port engine pylons.”

The rest of the crew looks back at me. My lieutenant’s bars never felt so heavy. “Jenkins,” I ask, “have you raised the captain?”

Jenkins looks at me. “The away team are not responding.”

“Enemy ship approaching attack range,” Sheila says.

Damn the captain for taking the whole bridge crew with him. Again. I feel sick.

“Get us out of here,” I say, and the ship falls into the wormhole between the stars.

Clifford

The portals opened all over Earth and they poured through.

I suppose they had a name for themselves, but we never learned it. All we knew about them was that they could breathe our air, drink our water, and that they could kill us. We finally learned to kill them back. It wasn’t easy. They were tough, but they weren’t invincible and we were motivated.

We taught them that humans didn’t give up easily. We taught them how to die. We taught them that lesson a lot. There’s only one lesson left to teach them.

Tunnels can go both ways.

Red/TalkWithMarie

It took 30 years for the state to build a world class tunnel, to be named after its favorite baseball player. Residents fought unsuccessfully for a voter-inclusive process. Local media labeled them over-zeaIous and unpatriotic. In spite of being ignored by politicians, the design committee and other power players, they were invited to the tunnel opening ribbon cutting ceremony. That morning, the Governor proudly took center stage among donors and residents. Just as he lifted the giant scissors, six three-ton sections of a concrete ceiling came crashing. Everyone ran away and left him buried in the rubble, tangled in red ribbon.

Danny Dwyer

We stared at the railroad tracks at the entrrance of the tunnel. “Hey, the Dude, I dare you to run through the tunnel before the next train comes along,” I stated.. “Your crazy,” the Dude responded. “Come on, the tunnel is only 10 feet long,” I responded, “you’ll be able to beat any train.” Heh, the tracks at the other side of the tunnel were angled at 90 degrees, oncoming trains whipped around that curve faster than one could react. The dude almost made it out of the tunnel before getting smacked by a train. There’s just something about a train that’s magic.

Pamela

I hated New York, but that’s where the job was. The alleys, while convenient shortcuts, can be like tunnels. You’re trapped. I was afraid of being raped or mugged. So I took martial arts and Krav Maga. One night I got ambushed. Tourists scared the creeps off before anything really happened, but it rattled me. Scared but determined, I jumped a mugger and left him in a dumpster the next night. And the night after that. And now the rapists and muggers fear the city’s open tunnel ways. Yep, I hate New York, but this is where the job is.

Norval Joe

Owen dozed while he walked and held unconsciously to the rope.
He woke when his shoulder brushed stone where the cavern closed off into a narrow tunnel. He ran his fingertips along its surface and recognized the horizontal grooves of gouges or chisels.
Owen’s eyes shot open and he gasped, “There’s a light ahead.”
Faint and far off, a distant glow betrayed an exit, or room with a fire.
“We must stay silent,” Traveller, the Ranger whispered.
They crept forward silently focused on the circle of light, oblivious to the creature that pulled itself from the lake in the cavern.

Planet Z

The Downtown Tunnel System connects all of the important office buildings and parking garages.

It’s like an airport terminal down there, with restaurants, convenience stores, barber shops, and even doctors and dentists offices.

Elevators and stairwells connect to the surface, not that you want to go up there.

That’s where the bums are.

They know not to come down into the tunnels, but every now and then, one comes down, and they’re so easy to spot in their ragged tattered and reeking clothes.

We don’t return them to the surface.

We send them deeper… and close the hatch behind them.