The Music Man

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Don Music was a puppet on a children’s show who’d get so frustrated trying to compose a song, he’d bash his head against the piano keys and give up.
Sadly, some children got the crazy idea that the proper response to frustration is to bash your head repeatedly against it.
These kids would bash their heads against their desks, balefully moaning “I CAN’T DO IT!”
One was the son of a florist, and after school he’d help out in the shop.
No matter what he tried, he never could keep a cactus alive, so he-
On second thought, don’t ask.

Beating

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My stomach is growling.
But I just ate.
I just ate a dog. And the dog is growling.
It’s a small dog, so I could still be hungry.
And if my stomach is growling because I am still hungry, the dog might be growling back at my stomach.
I will beat it with a hammer until it stops growling.
(The dog, not my stomach)
(Although if I beat the dog, I beat my stomach, since it is inside my stomach.)
I should never have eaten the dog.
But I was hungry and my stomach was growling.
Like it is now.

Troll

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Every time I need to cross the river, I look forward to crossing the troll’s bridge.
He does a fine job of keeping the bridge maintained, and has recently strengthened it for heavier cart traffic.
Commerce and trade are booming now.
Today, I’m delivering kegs to his tavern.
“More ale!” cheers the troll.
Every patron stands up and raises their flagons in respect to the host.
Hungry? His wife bakes the most excellent pies. Sometimes I come here just for the pie.
We unload the kegs and unhitch three goat from the front of the cart.
Love those goat-meat pies.

City of Smoke

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The smoke came gradually, over decades.
At first, people could go around with a wet handkerchief on their faces, but after a while we needed full facemasks and breathing filters.
Eventually, nothing but air tanks would suffice.
Travelers say the Five Cities have also been swallowed by the smoke, and it has almost reached the Sea of Sorrows.
Warlock Sturgis once kept the smoke at bay, but he and his apprentice vanished years ago.
He left his library behind, but none of the sages and scholars can comprehend his writings.
Maybe one day he’ll return.
Until then, we breathe uneasy.

A Medical Issue

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The minister’s absence was explained as a “medical issue.”
He sat in the morgue, waiting for the coroner to find a body similar to his for substitution.
“What about DNA?” asked the coroner.
The minister rolled up his sleeve. “Take blood from me now, compare it to itself when they bring you the body back.”
The coroner nodded, took a needle from the supply closet and swabbed the minister’s arm.
The minister smiled, and then his strange face went slack.
The new minister entered the room, patted the coroner on the shoulder.
“Poisoned needle?” he said.
The coroner destroyed it.

Weekly Challenge #221 – Psyche

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Welcome to the Weekly Challenge Number Two Hundred and Twenty-one, 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… was…. um…
It’s Psyche!
VOTING

Which were the best stories this week?
Guard13007
Steven
Zackmann
TJ
Norval Joe
Justin
Planet Z
  
Free polls from Pollhost.com

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

Guard13007

Psyche was a beautiful princess. She was visited by Cupid at night, and became his lover. She wanted to visit him, but he told her that she shouldn’t seek him out. Psyche wondered why this was, surely the Gods should allow Cupid to visit whomever?
Then one day, after a long time without being visited by the God of love, Psyche decided to finally seek Cupid out. She must find out why he’d been gone so long.
When Psyche found Cupid, there was another women with him. “So this is why I can’t see you!?”
“You have another woman?!”

Steven

I pull off the back door of the paddywagon. A cop flies out too,
thumping hard on the concrete. The supervillain’s last henchman is
ziptied to the seat. Another officer looks back through the window.
My exoskeleton smashes through reinforced glass and cop skull alike.
“I was wonderin’ when we’d get sprung,” the henchman says.
My head swivels toward him. “Who hired your boss?” The ectoplasm
from the villain’s defeat still smears across the San Matias sky.
“Wha? I dunno.”
“Damn.” I turn to leave.
“I thought you were getting’ me out?”
“Psyche,” I say, and tear out his spleen.

Zackmann

The little one claims I am potentially damaging his psyche. Teens are so dramatic. He pleads for me to “Stop calling the dog “Laptop” because of the price of the veterinary bill when he got sick , Stop referring to his grandparents return trip to Manila as “your mother losing her parents”, Stop calling the moment the plane leaves as “the beginning of your mother’s time of mourning” Since they are not dying and although she will miss them she can use Skype to call them a couple of days after they leave. Also Stop cooking food only my brother likes.”
zackmann

TJ

Shawn: I understand you’ve been murdered
Gus: Kidnapped.
Shawn: Your wife’s been kidnapped and you clearly need our help. My name is Shawn Spencer and this is my associate, Tracksuit McBeasley.
Gus: My mother was Mrs. McBeasley.
Shawn: Gus don’t be the entire city of Cleveland, Ohio. I am a psychic detective with the Santa Barbara Police Department. As for your wife I have no idea but I thought I might run around for about 38 minutes cracking wise while various things light up and in the end she would sort of .. turn up and I would take the credit.
Gus: It’s what we do.

Norval Joe

The Psyche or Leptosia nina is a small white butterfly indigenous to Southern India. It’s flight is weak and erratic. The body of the butterfly bobs up and down as it beats its wings. This short lived creature rarely leaves ground level as it flies low over the grass.
For years, decades, (a century?) I bob my way up and down as life beats its wings against me. My psyche, my soul, my breath, struggle for flight, though my body is weak and erratic. My achievements scatter around my feet, pale and colorless like the wings of a dead butterfly.

Justin

Psyche woke up in her room to find Eros standing over her with an
arrow. Startled, he accidentally scratched himself with the arrow,
making him love her. It also made him fall in love with self-harm. Now
hes a head over heels lover practicing disfiguring body modification.
What’s worse is his mother Aphrodite is encouraging it because the
whole reason Eros was there was to cause Psyche to fall in love with
an ugly creature, because Aphrodite was jealous of Psyche’s beauty.
Psyche tried to flee it all, but she could not escape her big fat
Greek mythology soap opera.

Planet Z

Carl Jung wrote extensively on the psyche and the soul, but he had a slight problem.
The German word for psyche is the same as the German word for soul.
Every time Jung tried to talk about one, his audience thought he was talking about the other.
So, he sought out a new word to represent the psyche.
Climbing the highest peak in the Alps, Carl met with an ancient guru.
And the guru told him “I’m an old fool on a cold mountain peak! What are you doing up here? Get your ass out of here!”
Carl left, dejected.

Mirror Mirror

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What?
Yes, my name is Mirror Mirror.
My parents had a sick sense of humor.
The Queen was just plain sick.
When she found out about my skill with poetry, I was dragged to the castle so that I could heap praise upon her beauty.
Well, until that beauty faded.
Then, one day, I caught a glimpse of a beautiful girl walking down the road outside the castle.
“Snow White,” the scullery maid said her name was.
I was left speechless.
The Queen asked me who the fairest of all was.
I answered, and was chained to the dungeon wall.

Keep Warm

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Winter is coming, and we watch the nearby islands raise their sails to catch the tradewinds for warmer seas.
But ours will not join them in the Great Migration.
“We stay,” says the tribal chief. “We have plenty of food, warm houses to live in.”
“But it will be cold!” the people say. “We can be warm all year round like the others.”
“Then go join them,” said the chief. “Get in your canoes and go to them.”
Many leave, but even more arrive from other islands.
“We will help you stay warm,” they say.
The chief winks and grins.

Chances

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Four gangsters sit at a card table in a room in an abandoned warehouse.
They pass around a revolver, each spinning the cylinder and placing it against their head before pulling the trigger.
They pass it round, sliding cash into the center of the table to up the stakes.
As if their lives weren’t stake enough.
Eventually, one of the men checks the cylinder.
“There’s no bullet in here,” he says.
He gets up, and tries to open the door.
Locked.
He pulls out his cell phone, but there’s no bars.
Then the lights go out.
And they smell… smoke.

Butt Dial

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Even though the experiment was a success, Bell and Watson needed to perfect the telephone device before heading to the patent office.
Some of their ideas were improvements on the original concept and others weren’t.
For instance, Watson rigged up a chair to the telephone that would call the other unit when someone sat down.
“Call someone else with your butt?” said Bell. “How brilliant and simple!”
After sitting down to think and calling each other over and over, they decided not to add the feature.
But today, it’s standard with cell phones.
Just put it in your back pocket.