Weekly Challenge #917 – Bread

The next topic is PICK TWO Brand awareness, Lot, Random, Envision, Dozen, Secretary

LIZZIE

“Bread crumbs, I need bread crumbs,” thought the restless crow. He wasn’t hungry. He just wanted bread crumbs. He read a story about dropping bread crumbs to leave a trail. He wanted to leave a trail! People would trickle out of the forest into the open field and marvel at his beauty! But he found no bread crumbs. He did consider resorting to his collection of glass eyes, but it was becoming more and more difficult to steal them from grumpy Old Maggie. So, he just sat on his scarecrow and waited. And he waited for a very long time!

RICHARD

All natural ingredients

Times have been tough since the Great War, but we survivors are tougher still.

We manage to get by on the bare essentials, and where even the bare essentials are lacking, we improvise.

Take our bread, for example: Flour is hard to come by, so we substitute sawdust instead. It makes for an interesting texture, but the flavour’s not too bad.

Mind you, if it wasn’t for the bread we’d starve.

That’s our diet: Bread and water.

Except the water is polluted, and the rain is far too acid to drink.

I won’t tell you what we substitute for water!

SERENDIPIDY

Smells can be so evocative.

Some may enthuse about the aroma of freshly baked bread, the fragrance of newly mown grass or the perfume of night scented stock on a warm spring evening.

Homely, comforting smells.

Not for me though. My tastes are very different.

In fact, those smells make me want to vomit.

Give me instead, the honest, ferrous tang of freshly spilled blood, the sweet smells of death and decay. Better than any bouquet of flowers or the most expensive of perfumes.

And above all, the dank, earthy aroma of the grave.

The smell of home, sweet home.

LISA

A Despondent Incident Room

Another day and another late afternoon briefing; there’s another three photos up on the board. It looks like our man’s working a lot harder than we are. He’s giving us nothing, and we’re working right round the clock.

I’ve not had a meal at home for weeks now. Mum’s doing me double sandwiches.

I used to eat at my desk but I can’t eat with them watching. It doesn’t feel right. They’re all around my age: I think all the women feel the same: it could be me up there. The bread from the uneaten sandwich hardens on my desk.

TOM

Pore more Sugar on It

Going Meta-Meta tonight. My personal rule for writing is: the first thing that lands in my head it the central theme of the story. It can produce some pretty weird stuff. Take tonight’s topic: bread. Before I could take a stroll down memory lane of my years working in a Bakery. I was the guy who choose how many loafs of vegetable herb we were delivering to San Fransisco. But No, what popped in my brain pan was Bread the band. And I use that term generously. If you took rock and roll and dipped in sugar Bread would come out.

NORVAL JOE

Linoliumanda continued to ignore her father’s requests to get into the car until he was clearly ready to blow his top. Red faced, he got out of the car and stomped his size fourteen wingtips toward her.
Just then, a rusty, late 50’s, Chevrolet Biscayne, huffed and rumbled to a stop next to them. A gray-haired woman in a bright orange mumu under a olive rain poncho climbed out, carrying a small brown loaf of bread.
Mr. Withybottom’s jaw dropped. “Buhmilda. What are you doing here?”
The woman smiled at Mr. Withybottom. “I could as you the same, Cousin Charlie.”

PLANET Z

Tonya went to school and opened a bakery.
Hired a few of her neighbors and friends, worked long hours.
Everybody got paid well and got great benefits.
She even covered child care, which for single mothers, is everything.
Then the riots came.
Her bakery was broken into and burned to the ground.
The security company kept the video off-site, so she watched as one of those friends used her keys to open the security grate to get inside.
And set the fire that consumed her business.
All her hard work. All she did for others.
Years of sacrifice.
For nothing.

George and The Kingdom of Green, Part 2

George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
Instead of looting and pillaging, he liked to go exploring.
“And then loot and pillage?” asked his mateys.
“No,” said George. “I write articles for a travel magazine.”
His favorite place to visit had been the Kingdom of Green.
It was land of endless fields and forests, and the castle on the hill shone in the sun.
“It’s gone, George,” said a messenger from the magazine. “The king died, and the queen soon after. It’s all in ruin.”
George folded his map, put it in a drawer, and wept.

George and The Kingdom of Green, Part 1

George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
Give him a ship, and he’ll give you back a shipwreck.
One time, he wrecked on the rocks of an island where everyone wore green.
“Come with me,” said a villager. “The king and queen are waiting.”
The royal couple offered to fix George’s ship, but he had to promise never to loot or pillage the land.
George kept his word, and he changed the maps to read “Dangerous rocks and monsters.”
That way, pirates would forever avoid that land.
George assumed that they lived happily ever after.

George builds

George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
Once, when George wasn’t careful about some pirate secrets, a fellow pirate shushed him and said “The walls have ears.”
Ever since then, George had been nervous about talking near walls.
He’d only talk to people outdoors where there weren’t any walls.
Or in gazebos. Because they’re kind of like buildings, but don’t have any walls.
Railings, maybe. But those are more like lattices or fences.
The captain watched George trying to construct a gazebo on the main deck.
“I should have been a farmer,” he muttered to himself.

George the looter

George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
These days, it’s all about branding. Social media presence.
George dominated the Pirate scene online, with millions of followers on Twitter and Instagram.
His YouTube videos were all over Facebook.
Maybe that’s why he wasn’t a very good pirate.
While all the other pirates looted and pillaged, George snapped selfies and rocked the #pirate hashtag.
Once, he swung his selfie stick instead of his cutlass, and he broke his smartphone.
“At least you’re finally looting,” said the captain as he watched George steal a replacement and swap sim cards.

George tells tales

George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
While his shipmates were fending off a deadly sea monster, George was at the childrens’ hospital, entertaining patients with pirate stories.
The kids loved it when George showed up and told his stories.
His shipmates, not so much.
Sea monsters are even more dangerous when you fight them shorthanded, and as clumsy as George was, he could have been useful as a decoy or bait.
In the middle of a story, George’s phone rang.
He flicked it to vibrate mode.
“Sorry about that,” said George. “Now where was I?”

George the tenant

George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
He also wasn’t a very good tenant at Miss Mapleton’s Boarding House.
Every morning, George used up all the hot water.
The sink’s drain was always clogged with his beard stubble.
Thank goodness Mr. Grant in seven was a plumber.
He also left the seat up. And never, ever flushed.
Miss Mapleton was always warning George that if he kept this up, she’d throw him out.
But she never did.
Because as bad as a tenant George was, at least he paid his rent in full, and on time.

Weekly Challenge #916 – Stolen

The next topic is Bread

LIZZIE

“Nothing but a crappy painting. A bunch of odd flowers on a dark blue background,” she said. The neighbor advised her to have an expert look at it. “Preposterous!” She knew her art. So, she tossed it in the dumpster. When it was dark, the neighbor grabbed it. He wasn’t stealing it! He had it appraised and… it was worth a million bucks! He bought a new house and a new car and told everyone he had won the lottery, just in case. Oh, and he still drives by the old house to check the neighborhood dumpster for crappy artwork.

RICHARD

Stolen!

I’ve been a victim of identity theft.

Some lowlife criminal is pretending to be me. They go through my trash at night, and somehow they’ve stolen my credit card details and the passwords to my social media.

To be honest, I’m not that bothered about it.

In fact, I’ve been leaving personal information for them to discover for quite some time now.

My credit has been maxxed out for years, my social reputation is at an all-time low, everyone’s chasing me for money.

Now, I just blame the scammers.

I’m perfectly happy to let them take on my failings!

LIZZIE

Stolen

We’re now knee deep in November and no further forward with the case. A case so clueless it doesn’t even have a catchy name yet, just an awful lot of missing women.

Inside is brighter than outside, the mood lower than the cloud on the moors. Oddly, it feels like the sun coming out when after discovering another body we realise he’s taken a necklace from this girl too.

It’s not much is it? But it’s something, another piece in the puzzle and progress of sorts. Our man takes souvenirs. We just need to find him and his treasure chest.

SERENDIPIDY

Sixteen years they kept me chained in the cellar.

My youth, stolen, thanks to their evil deeds.

They’re dead now, by my hand, and nobody holds me responsible. They had it coming, they say, deserved everything they got.

I’m happy to let them believe that.

But the truth of the matter is that they never locked me in the cellar at all. I made it all up – a story to justify my actions, and everybody believed me.

My youth wasn’t stolen at all. I had a great time growing up, I just hated my parents.

So, I stole their lives.

TOM

All the Presidents Kids

He always knew the election was stolen. That other dick had been a better dick by rigging the total in the city. I was child the time that happen. I was a very young man the second time, but a well place young man. I was on loan to Joe Woods group was a single propose. To route the calls from down state. IT was simple hack that surely would be fixed in the next election but not that night. The numbers came in late the so the Chicago machine could offset total, Nixon take the state, wins the election.

NORVAL JOE

Sabrina pulled out her phone and called her grandmother. “Hi Granny…”
She held the phone away from her ear and Billbert could hear the old woman shouting.
“No,” Sabrina said. “No one had stolen my phone. It’s a long story, but we’re in town and Billbert’s eyesight’s been stolen, and half his hearing.”
She put the phone back to her ear as her grandmother had stopped screaming.
“Yes. I know that’s a classic Black Knight’s move, but I can’t do anything about it. Can you come straighten him out?”
She put her phone away. “Grandma Buhmilda will be right here.”

PLANET Z

The Bleeb are an ancient race.
Once rulers of a massive empire, reduced to wanderers of the galaxy, searching for the remnants of their shattered homeworld.
Scanning… testing… analyzing chemical signatures…
Piece by piece, they reappropriate their planet.
Gathering asteroids, hurling the massive rocks through hyperspace channels.
Lifeless planets to shatter and sift.
It is when there is life that the moral question rises.
The Bleeb are honest brokers, and offer fair compensation.
Transport to new worlds. Terraforming technology, vast eons of knowledge to impart.
Some resist.
Just more to sift through when the Bleeb shatter their worlds to dust.

George on the movie set

George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
This didn’t matter to the production assistant who was rounding up extras for the latest Disney pirate movie.
“Who wants twenty dollars a day?” he shouted. “And a hot lunch, too!”
George and his shipmates waved their cutlasses around, growling and scowling, doing whatever the director told them to do.
“CUT!” shouted the director, and he walked up to George. “This one’s playing Angry Birds on his phone.”
So, George was fired from the movie.
Which was a good thing. Everyone else got food poisoning from the catered lunch.

George the poet

George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
He wasn’t a very good poet either.
He tried to write a poem about pirates,
But nothing rhymes well with pirate.
Well, maybe admire it. And retire it.
“What about other languages?” said the captain. “Spanish for pirate is pirata. Lots of Spanish words rhyme with it.”
“I don’t know Spanish,” said George.
“In French, pirate is… pirate,” said the captain. “But I’m sure there’s lots of French words that rhyme with it.”
“I don’t know French, either,” said George.
Nobody told George that poetry doesn’t have to rhyme.