The 100 Word Stories Podcast

• Lisa
• Richard
• Serendipidy
• Lizzie
• Norval Joe
• Tom
• Planet Z

The next topic is Detail

LIZZIE

Black and white. A vision of nothingness inside a vision of everything.And he points. No one knows.
And he moves forward, alone. The balloons he ‘s holding will be black. The stars hanging from them will be black.
And the more they fly, the less white he will see.
And nothing is there anymore. Just stars hanging from balloons, flying away in silence, ahead of him. No one knows.
And he stops. He wants to smile, but he can’t.
Three cheers and all that. Be brave and all that.
Black and white. A vision of everything ahead of nothing.

RICHARD

Caught!

If she points at you, you’re dead.

Your only hope is to stay out of her field of vision, make no sudden movements, and keep a low profile.

You might, just might escape her notice.

It’s not guaranteed though: She has eyes like a hawk, and few can avoid her gaze.

With these words echoing through my mind, I selected my position with care, keeping to the shadows, careful not to draw attention to myself.

Then, I sneezed.

Cover blown!

To my horror, her finger pointed straight at me.

Chosen by the teacher to answer the question on the board.

NORVAL JOE

“You want out?” Mr. Withybottom asked Billbert and unlocked the doors. “Cheers.”
Sabrina sat on the sidewalk side of the car, and Billbert asked her to open the door.
“I’ll come with you,” she said and got out of the car.
Linoliumanda quickly followed Billbert out, too.
Sabrina rolled her eyes. “It’s a pattern, Billbert. You can see that, can’t you? Everywhere we go, she wants to follow.”
Billbert watched as Linoliumanda’s eyes filled with tears of rage and she shook her finger at Sabrina.
Then his vision went black and the two girls’ voices were muffled as they argued.

TOM

flogging will continue until morale improves

They called the program F-T-V. The joke around the office was it stood for Fuck TV. 30 staff crammed into a tiny room staring at a Zoom screen. In bright primary colors the monitor read: Fuel The Vision. It was Sam’s idea to bring in a motivational team to boast productivity. The life coach was perky in the most detestable manor. Radiating a millennial affect that did not sit well with the senior staff. And I mean senior, most of them were Boomers long overdue to leave the work force. The last virus had taken out the under 40 cohort.

SERENDIPIDY

It’s all down to science. By examining the points where blood has pooled and spattered, one can deduce how the victim died, how violent the attack and where each individual wound was inflicted.

To you, it may look like a complete mess, but to an expert it’s a pattern as clear as any map.

Take this crime scene, for example: I can tell the victim suffered initial, violent blunt-force blows, scattering blood spots across the wall, and the fatal wound was a slice to a major artery.

Not that I’m any sort of forensic scientist.

I committed the crime!

LISA

October 27th 1978

The incident room smells of men. The incident room smells of men with creased shirts. The incident room smells of men with creased shirts and creased faces. It’s been a long monotonous day and is far from finishing.

A squealing wheel heralds the arrival of the tea trolley. The missing girls watch the tea being poured from their photos pinned around a local map. Pippa hastily swallows her digestive.

“Is there a Petrol Station on the B28?”

“Yup. Texaco.”

“It’s a pattern… Look!”

She points around the map explaining her reasoning feeling like, perhaps, today some progress has been made.

PLANET Z

The local grocery store chain offers fuel points.
It doesn’t have any gas pumps at any nearby location.
I have no idea where else I can redeem them.
For thirty years, I’ve been accumulating fuel points.
So, my card has like a million fuel points on it.
One day, I’m going to find a location with gas pumps.
And I’m going to stand out there, filling up everyone for free, and spraying gas everywhere and laughing.
What do I care how much it costs… I have a million fuel points.
Although, I’m going to need to buy a car first.

• Lisa
• Richard
• Serendipidy
• Lizzie
• Norval Joe
• Tura
• Tom
• Planet Z

The next topic is PICK TWO Points, Vision, Fuel, It’s a pattern, Cheers, Refreshment

SERENDIPIDY

What do you mean, ‘what the hell is this?’

That, is what you’ve been asking me to make for ages – you know I’ve been trying to find a recipe everywhere, with no luck, so I’ve had to work it out for myself.

And now, you have the nerve to question it?

You seriously don’t want to eat it, after I’ve slaved for hours over a hot stove, just to please you?

As for ‘what the hell is this?’ You know exactly what it is… Rat stew!

Exactly what you asked for.

You didn’t?

So, what the hell is ratatouille then?

TOM

Hair Today

My grandmother pointed out one could train their hair to fall along a
well define part line. Try as I may as child this did not work. Brushes
and combs were no match for the might follicles My hair had other ideas
in mind. Sure, the part starts on the left, but given the slight
provocation it will loses all cohesion. I have over the years taken
ownership of dishevel, cultivated a crawl from dumpster affect. With
age I have parted will much of my hair. Receding and thinning soon I
will look more like Gollum with a single hair part.

RAT STEW

In the eighteen years of posting, we have had some interesting topic to
write on. I’ve found some angle to get to 100 words. This has me dead in
my tracks. No muse can save me. I am coming up blank. I guess at the
minimum can pounded what the offering is. Is it a stew made with rats?
Is it a stew for rats? Is it threat like he’ll swim with the fishes,
boys going to make rat stew with that rat. Is this Mr. and Mrs. Stew’s
cruel joke on their first born? Don’t have a clue.

NORVAL JOE

Billbert sat between the two girls in the back of Mr. Withybottom’s Lincoln.
Linoliumanda leaned forward and glared at Sabrina. “You’re a rat.”
Sabrina was shocked. “Where did that come from?”
“Well…” Linoliumanda looked like she had to think of a reason. “Because you’re a witch and you dragged Billbert and me into your feud with the Black Knights.”
Sabrina crossed her arms. “Then you’re rats, too.”
“Who?” Linoliumanda asked indignantly.
“All of you,” Sabrina snapped at her.
When Mr. Withybottom stopped at a corner, Billbert said, “You can let me out here. I’ll walk the rest of the way.”

TURA

Rat stew
———
“Have you decided what you’re having?” inquired my dining companion.

“Not yet, can you help me out with some of these?” I replied. “What’s ‘ratchet’?”

“Rat stew,” he said. “Probably farmed though, nothing like the flavour of wild-caught field rats, but you rarely see those commercially.”

“And ‘presentation de bratchet à la graisse de caniche’?”

“Bratchet, that’s a type of hunting dog. It’s a mixed grill of the legs, belly, and ribs, with a poodle fat sauce.”

“Paté de phoque matraqué?”

“Clubbed seal paté.”

“Yum!” But I chose the fillet of unborn foal with sheep’s eye jelly. There are limits.

LIZZIE

“Not inside the cave,” they said.
Why? No one answered.
Onward to the cave then.
There was nothing much going on. A few shields with Viking drawings, a few contraptions made of tiny bones, and a dead body.
She couldn’t understand what the fuss was all about. Perhaps it was the cattle skull on the wall.
“Rat this, rat that. Stew?! No, thank you,” she said out loud. “This dead man looks remarkably good for a dead person.”
And then… She didn’t see it coming.
The dead man was not dead and, much to her misfortune, she was a rat.

LISA

Rat Stew

Meals were haphazard. Life was haphazard really, we’d pretty much moved into the basement by November. The summer had been full of dandelion salads. Blackberries and apples warmed by the autumn sun had just run out.

Our cat, Lucky, saw to herself and always had. Our neighbours, long gone now, had eaten their pets. We hadn’t: she brought us the occasional rat and was another warm thing to snuggle up next to at night. Besides, we had hope for Christmas. Hope was essential in these unprecedented times. We were looking forward to having her as part of our feast then.

RICHARD

Nuked

They told us the bomb would be the end of the world, but it hasn’t turned out that badly, to be honest.

I’ll grant you that the radiation burns, are inconvenient, shedding your skin and constant vomiting can be unpleasant, and learning to live in the ruins of what used to be civilisation has been challenging.

But, we’re making a go of it.

Take me, for example. I’ve opened my own post-apocalyptic restaurant, serving a variety of tasty dishes:

Roach pasta, louse noodles, and my best seller, rat stew.

Tasty and nutritious, and business is going like a bomb!

PLANET Z

Twenty days out at sea.
Provisions for ten, long used up.
No land, no wind, sails raised like a prayer.
The barrels of fresh water empty, barely enough for a handful of men from the tarps set on the desk to evaporate from the salt.
Rat stew came up from the galley.
Even though we’d caught and skinned the last of the rats days ago.
“It’s rat stew,” said the captain, handing out the bowls.
And the few of us left didn’t look around for the others who were gone.
The cabin boy. The gunners.
And all of the passengers.