I haven’t seen Mother in years, but one day I’ll remember the combination to the lock on the vault I put her in.
I thought about calling a locksmith, but that would just put him in danger of mother.
And me as well, I suppose, since it has been a while since I last drank.
She used to scream so loud, you could hear her through the thick iron door. But now, she’s far to weak and frail from the thirst to make a sound.
And if I let her out, I know I will be punished for this… naughtiness.
Timeshifted
When the time machine exploded, the research team told you I was dead, my atoms scattered throughout history.
I was badly hurt, sure, but there’s great medical care in the future. All kinds of advanced Star Trek stuff here.
You can hardly see the scars from where they regrew my arm, and this new eye is as good as the old one… even better, with the anti-aging treatments.
If only you’d have held on. They could have cured that cancer.
Instead, I wasn’t there to help you though it.
You killed yourself, and I’m laying a flower on your grave.
Charity Begins Somewhere Else
Every year, we set up a tent in the middle of the city.
The smell of freshly-roasted turkey, baked stuffing, and sweet potatoes fills the air.
This brings out the homeless, lonely, and poor in droves.
We invite them in and they sit down.
We make them wait for a while.
When they’re good and hungry, we ask them to bow their heads and then we feed them…
Into massive circus cannons.
We launch them everywhere… into the river, out into the dump.
Pretty much anywhere but here.
Good riddance.
Then, we sit down and eat our own Thanksgiving meal.
Look In The Mirror
I pour the white dust out on to the mirror and quickly chop it into lines.
One by one, they vanish up my nose.
I let the rush carry me for a minute and then sniff whatever I can off of the mirror before putting it away.
That’s when I catch sight of my reflection in the mirror.
My eyes are bloodshot.
My face is thin and gray.
I barely recognize myself. What have I done?
That’s the moment where I make the promise never to do it again.
I’ll never look at myself in the mirror after doing cocaine.
Uncle Artie
Uncle Artie was a man of the carnival. He traveled the country from coast to coast so many times, and there wasn’t a sucker’s dollar he couldn’t take.
When he died, his body was cremated and the ashes put into one of three urns.
His lawyer shuffled the urns around, and we chose.
Aunt Gladys came up empty.
Shuffle again. My dad thought he had it. Nope.
Unlike those two, Artie taught me all his tricks. I had the winner, and walked away with ten million dollars.
And his ashes.
(Don’t flush them all at once. They’ll clog the drain.)
The Missing Story
I read a bedtime story to Lisa every night.
It’s always a new story. She never wants to hear the same story twice.
She cries when I box up the story books to take to the used bookstore. She wants to keep them all.
Her bookshelf filled up quickly.
And three more I bought her.
The books are in piles from floor to ceiling, filling every closet and room.
I can’t get down the stairs to the basement anymore. It’s also full of books.
So, we switched to eBooks.
I read a story from the Kindle, and she falls asleep.
Weekly Challenge #239 “Day Job”
Welcome to the Weekly Challenge Number Two Hundred and Thirty-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 Day Job!
Go ahead and listen to them and then vote for your favorites (multiple selections are allowed):
Tony
My eyes have become bloodshot staring at this living puzzle. Shift a room a couple of inches and the user’s psychological state shifts too. Enclose a space too much and the boss gets offended. Open it up and there’s a looming Orwellian/Hawthorne effect. Jesus, this office is too small to be driving me this crazy!
At least I don’t design homes. If a closet were too deep, the bathroom might not have a bath. Expand the size of the bathroom, and you’d shrink the living room. Or kitchen. Or bedroom!
I’d be too nervous to make changes. Way too nervous
Tom
My day job is playing Dr. Frank-N-Furter in a Furbee bar in mythic Connecticut. A happy tree friends version of Rocky Horror Picture Show. It’s really hot, not sexual, its damn toasty wearing a corset over a chimmunck suit. I truly believe the two greatest words in the English language are “Musical Theater” It’s a bit of a drag that the pay doesn’t quite meet the bills. Thank god for my night job in The City. Senior Account for Goldman Sack lets me channel that wild and untamed thing. Don’t feel it be it. Just be it and steel it
Zackmann
Say that employment office you sent me to isn’t a job office anymore. It has been massage
parlor for over two weeks now. When the clerk asked me why I was there she wasn’t really
listening. I said I was looking for a day job since I am a writer and everyone who reads my work
tells me to keep my day job. Yes, it was one of those massage parlors. Of course I enjoyed it
but I would have really liked to have had a massage. She said “Hey, Writer Guy come back for
the Happy Ending”.
AM Earley
Claire really liked her day job. Oh sure she had to make her deliveries between midnight and eight o’clock, but she saw more morning hours than office workers.
She was liked so much, that one of her clients requested that only she delivered to them. Even over the guys who have been there for decades. She finally asked the scientist who always received that cargo why they preferred her.
“The live specimens always arrived calm when it is you driving.”
“Well,” Claire thought, “if they are calm enough that I’ve never known they were alive, I’m going to continue singing every song in my I-pod.”
Steven the Nuclear Man
I guess it sounds easy. Maybe even fun. But it’s not. I can’t do
the simplest chores – fill out your check BEFORE the cashier’s done,
you douchebag!I’m always busy. Hey – you! You park like a douche!
And I have to explain my job – no, ma’am, it’s not sexist because
douching was developed by our patriarchal culture. Douches aren’t
healthy for women.Some days, I wish I could just make widgets all day.
“Quit bitching about your job! You’re a douche!”
You’re a douche!
At least I have job security.
TJ
Frank made a donut. Jen grabbed it on her way to the office, where she
designed a luggage rack on a 4×4. Mark dropped some mail off at her
workstation and turned up his headphones. He was listening to Wendy
argue with Bill on the radio, powered by a wind turbine designed by
Annie and built by Warren, which Rachel had negotiated the easement for
on Harold’s farm. Harold reworked his wheat field to accommodate it
and Jake took his harvest into town. Jane milled his flour and bagged up
some of it for Frank, who made … another donut.
Norval Joe
The masked crime fighter crouched atop the bank in the moonless dark.
He watched the bank robbers back thier unmarked van up to the glass doors of the entrance.
By day, he was an unassuming Pest Control Agent.
As the would be criminals gathered and placed the explosive charge on the door, he dropped lightly onto one of them and clung tightly. One by one, the remaining three tried to pull Flypaper Man from their accomplice and joined him in his sticky fate.
Eventually a policeman arrested the clump of men and carefully peeled each criminal from the super hero.
Katwood
Most people were relieved when the governments crawled out of their bunkers and reclaimed the world. Not me. While the governments planned and strategized, I grew up in a world where fighting zombies was a given. Now, there are “too many” zombie hunters. All the agencies say they can only have “mentally stable” people in their employment. Stability doesn’t matter, killing zombies matters. I can kill more zombies in a day than those buffoons could in a week. Yet I’m stuck taking out the trash as a day job, only being able to kill zombies in my off hours. Idiots.
Planet Z
My day job was to keep the world from blowing up.
I managed the antimatter flow at New Edison Power.
The plasma ducts vibrated in unusual harmonies, and I recorded them.
My night job is with the radio station.
You’ve heard of The Doctor Power Hour?
I’m Doctor Power.
I mix my recordings, weaving the whistles of release valves and other generator sounds into trance music.
The audience grew quickly, and I started doing weekend concerts to hundreds… thousands…
Instead of keeping it safe, I tuned the Generator for music.
It exploded.
Oh well. I still have my night gig.
The Council
The Emergency Council of Hedgehogs was convened under the giant oak tree in the deepest part of the woods.
Panic ran rampant as teddy bears were stumbling around drunkenly after their picnic, grabbing hedgehogs and tossing them around.
It was decided that an emissary would approach the mommies and daddies of the teddy bears, pleading for help.
But instead of putting the teddy bears to bed to sleep off their stupor, the mommies and daddies got drunk and threw the hedgehog emissary around, too.
Angered, the hedgehogs burrowed deep under the giant oak tree and set the woods on fire.
The Angry Birds
I use my iPhone to play Words With Friends, but all my friends have given up on this Scrabble variant for a game called Angry Birds.
Apparently, these birds are angry because a bunch of evil pigs have stolen their eggs, so they attack various structures built by the pigs trying to kill them and take all the eggs back.
I loaded the game and tried to negotiate a settlement between the birds and the pigs.
And then I killed them all.
I smiled, had a huge plate of bacon and eggs for breakfast, and sat on a feather-filled pillow.
Where did the turkeys go?
Strange things are happening these days.
The strangest?
Where did all the turkeys go?
That’s the question everybody’s asking.
All of the grocery stores are out of turkeys.
There isn’t a turkey to be seen at any farm.
And if you bought a turkey already and put it in your freezer, you’re probably wondering why there’s a huge empty space in there now.
Even pictures of turkeys have vanished from everywhere. There’s no entry for it in the dictionary.
Oh well. I didn’t like turkey anyway. Forget it.
Pass the mashed potatoes and gravy, please. That roasted eagle smells wonderful.