Martin never liked going into the office.
All the people and noise confused him.
Having to pretend to pay attention during boring meetings.
It was easier to deal with everything through the filter of a screen.
So, when the pandemic came, and everyone worked from home, he was ecstatic.
His productivity went way up, he was happy.
He got a promotion and a raise, and lots of bonuses.
All that wasted commute time was now spent in his home gym.
And his chemistry lab, working on mutations of the virus.
So he’d never have to go to the office again.
Weekly Challenge #863 – PICK TWO Quit, Mouse trap, Base, Facts, Martian, Stamp
LISA
Last Wishes
We’re all sat around a cracked Formica table playing MouseTrap while the rain relentlessly shoots at the caravan roof.
“Oooh it’s good to be back at Base!” Dad motions to outside. He tries to stretch out to show how relaxed he is but can’t, there’s no room. The three sleeping bags from the tent drip water into a little puddle that slides towards the open door and escapes.
Mum’s having the time of her life though. And that’s what this is about – our last holiday together. We snuggle in tighter and not just because of the lack of space.
RICHARD
Mouse Trap
Every Christmas at family get-togethers it’s the same old routine.
Out comes the box, and we all spend an hour or so putting together the various board game pieces, for Mouse trap.
There are, of course, always pieces missing, and we can never get that ridiculous plastic basket to stay put where it’s meant to go. Half the mice have been substituted over the years for Monopoly pieces, which makes the whole thing a bit nonsensical.
And the game is always a crushing disappointment.
I wish you could just quit.
But it’s not in the rules. I double-checked!
LIZZIE
“Quit whining. The mouse trap has been set. The facts are the facts. What about the martian base? I don’t care about the martian base. Let them take care of their own base. We take care of our stuff. No! No way, you’re doing that. The order has been signed and stamped. What do you mean? Yes, with the stamp thing they always use. Not that one. The other one. The mouse trap? You know. No, I’m not saying the martians are mice. What?! We’re not going to stamp the martians! That’s not what I said! Oh, forget about it.”
SERENDIPIDY
Will I ever quit?
I doubt it.
I know it’s a disgusting habit. Antisocial, bad for my health and for the health of those around me, and nowhere near as acceptable as it once was, but I suppose I’m addicted, and I’ve no inclination to stop.
So, you can keep spouting all the facts at me until you’re blue in the face. Tell me it makes my clothes and surroundings reek as much as you like.
Because, I simply don’t care.
I enjoy it, and it relaxes me.
And although killing people may be morally wrong, I love doing it!
TURA
Mousetrap; stamp
———
I found a mouse in the trap today. It was still alive, its hindquarters crushed under the spring. I was taking the trap out to the garden when the mouse spoke to me.
“this world is broken and made of pain” it said in its tiny voice.
“all flesh hungers for obliteration” it said.
“if you knew you would beg to avoid reincarnation”
“pain is all that was and is and shall be”
“choose death”
I pulled open the spring and dropped the body on the garden path, then stamped it under my heel.
Why should I believe a mouse?
NORVAL JOE
Sabrina stamped her foot. “Quit wasting time.” She waved her hand. The rain stopped and the clouds slowly dissipated. “You have to face the facts, Billbert’s life is in danger. You can either help me protect him, or you can get out of my life.”
Linoliamanda looked stunned. “That was harsh.”
The bell rang to start their next class. Before Billbert could step that direction, two very large boys blocked him.
One poked him in the chest with a very hard finger and said, “You look like you want to fight. Meet me after school behind the baseball diamond backstop.”
PLANET Z
Freddy liked to tailgate.
But he didn’t tailgate football or baseball.
He tailgated executions.
He’d load up the truck with coolers and a grill and food and water and beer.
And he’d get a stack of sticks and signboards and a staplegun with staples.
And markers.
He’d sell stuff to the protestors, people from either side, whatever.
And made a lot of money from it.
Until someone tried to steal his cashbox, and he killed the guy.
Freddy was arrested, charged, tried, and convicted.
Death, of course.
And on the night of the execution, protestors showed up, waving blank signs.
Climb the mountain
“Climb the mountain,” says the wise man.
So, we climb.
It gets colder, and the air gets thinner.
The sky is so beautiful, here above the clouds.
The blue and white, swirling around the mountain range.
I can barely feel my body.
I can barely hear anything, except for… wind.
And the old man, grabbing my arms, shouting in my face.
KEEP CLIMBING! KEEP CLIMBING!
So, we climb.
The air is colder, thinner, darker.
We’re above the sky, looking down on the world.
The old man standing over me.
I close my eyes, and the cold and dark surround me.
Find my
I really like Apple’s Find My feature.
I rarely misplace my laptop, phone, and watch.
But when I do, it’s nice to be able to run Find My and ping the missing device.
Usually it’s in my apartment. Or in the trunk of my car.
Once I lost my phone while on a hiking trip, and the phone reported itself at the bottom of a deep canyon I’d been hiking through.
If only Apple had a drone service to go fetch your device.
As long as the drone doesn’t fail and get lost, and you have to locate it, too.
Markham County
All roads in Markham County lead to the landfill.
Trucks arrive at dawn, lining up at the gate.
The supervisor weighs each truck, takes their cash, and sends them along the last mile.
Up to the rim, and back down into the pit.
Opening their back gates, and laying out their trash.
The bulldozers shove the trash into a pile, and cover it with dirt.
The trucks leave the pit, drive down the rim, and back out through the gate.
Every day, the pile gets bigger, and the pit gets smaller.
At the end of the roads of Markham County.
Exit through the gift shop
It’s a cliche to finish a thrilling experience by exiting through the gift shop.
But what happens when the thrilling experience is a gift shop?
The greatest gift shop in the world is a very thrilling place.
And you exit it through a gift shop for the gift shop.
Over time, that gift shop for the gift shop has become so thrilling, it needed a gift shop to exit through.
Pretty soon, there were an endless series of gift shops.
And nobody could exit.
Because you couldn’t exit through a gift shop, they all winked out of existence at once.
Myrtle
Aunt Myrtle always said that everything is in the last place you look.
So when Aunt Myrtle lost her glasses, she fumbled around everywhere.
The sofa, the table, the countertop.
She checked the bathroom counter.
And she looked in her purse at least a hundred times.
“Did you steal them?” she yelled at her cats.
And she checked her purse again.
Her heart couldn’t take the panic, and she fell to the floor.
No, her glasses weren’t on the floor.
They were up on her hair.
She might have seen them in the bathroom mirror.
If she’d had them on.
The whisperer’s town
The village’s Lord Ghost Talker lay in the church for three days.
People paying their respects, tapping the old man’s forehead with their thumb, as the tradition.
One by one, they closed their eyes, whispered his name, and waited.
Until, finally, someone heard him.
It was the girl from the Martin farm, the pretty one.
She went to the Ghost Talker’s vault, standing at the wooden crate full of keys.
“It’s this one, he says.” picking up the key the old man had shown her.
And she opened the lock.
The town elders began preparations for a parade and feast.
Weekly Challenge #862 – What happens next?
LISA
The Split
Me and Paula were great together. I got the card details, I could play people, got them practically handing me their wallets. She’d call them straight after pretending to be from the bank’s fraud squad, this blocked the line so they couldn’t report anything. Meanwhile I’d go and spend, spend, spend. Expensive stuff we listed immediately on eBay. We were the perfect partnership, divided everything equally.
No one could see what would come next, someone conned me Nan, honestly it split me in two. I couldn’t do it after then.
Then Paula left. Apparently she loved the money, not me.
RICHARD
Your choice
I decided to write one of those ‘choose your own plot’ novels. You know the kind: Every time a plot-changing decision comes along, you decide which choice to take, and everyone’s story will turn out differently.
So, let’s give it a try!
What happens next? Did I finish the story in one hundred words, or not?
Yes, or no?
If you chose ‘no’, then read on. If not, skip to the last line.
So, you chose ‘No’, and as you predicted, I didn’t get to one hundred words… Only ninety-one!
And, since you chose ‘yes’… Of course I did!
LIZZIE
It was damn dark.
She unblocked the phone with his finger.
“The cheating bastard. That bitch will never get the jewels.”
She buried his hand. The rest of the body was somewhere out there, floating in the cold river.
So, what happens next, she thought.
“Get the damn jewelry box, that’s what happens next.”
Total silence.
“Fancy house, he bought her.”
She roamed about in the bedroom.
“Ah, here it is.”
When she opened the jewelry box, she gasped. A bullet?
When she turned around, it was too late.
Damn, it was dark and she had killed the wrong twin.
SERENDIPIDY
So, what happens next?
I think we both know the answer to that.
First, I’ll torture you in ways that can barely be imagined, then I’ll kill you and dispose of your body. Your remains will never be found.
Maybe, they’ll catch me; So what?
I’ll be famous. Newspapers will carry front-page spreads with my picture, books will be written about me, and – who knows – perhaps Netflix will serialise my life?
They may even make a blockbuster movie, about me.
And you?
You’ll just be a blurry photo; a location; a date.
Mostly forgotten. Just another of my victims.
NORVAL JOE
They stepped under the overhang near their classroom as the rainstorm increased in intensity.
Billbert nodded toward Sabrina. “Sabrina is a weather witch. She can control the weather.”
Linoliamanda sniffed. “So, what happens next, lightning and thunder?”
Sabrina shrugged. “If you want.”
With a flash and a boom a bolt of lightning stuck behind the school close to the football field.
Linoliamanda rolled her eyes. “Let me see you hit the flagpole.”
A second later, lightning struck the pole.
“Wait,” Sabrina said. “You said you believe I’m a witch.”
“I do,” Linoliamanda said. “I just wanted to see some magic.”
PLANET Z
While performing trials of the latest cancer drug on mice, Mindy observed that half of the mice turned blue while the other half exploded.
She ran the trial multiple times, and the results were the same.
Half blue, half exploded.
She handed the results to her supervisor, and he tore them up.
“Nonsense!”
Two hours later, watching blue mice scurry from the exploded carcasses of their fellow mice, he wasn’t so dismissive.
“Have you tried this on an odd number of mice?” He asked.
Mindy filled a syringe with serum, injected it into a mouse, and they watched and waited.
Wanted, one piano
I bought a piano.
But it was haunted.
The ghost of a little girl played it at night.
And played it badly.
I hired the ghost of a piano teacher to give her lessons.
She got better, but the piano was out of tune.
So, I hired the ghost of a piano tuner to tune the piano.
“You need a living piano tuner,” said the ghost.
And he billed me for his time.
I refused to pay the bill.
The ghost of a collection agent kept calling me, over and over.
I hired an exorcist, and sold the damn piano.