I love to plant flowers and herbs and vegetables.
This house has a big yard. And a bitch of a neighbor.
She rips out the herbs. She thinks they are ugly.
She rips out the rose bushes. She thinks they are too showy.
So, I planted climbing roses, the ones with thorns.
Let her try to pull those out.
And I invited her over for a visit.
Pointed to my garden.
And told her when she dies, I will plant all of this on her grave.
And she’s welcome to reach up from Hell and pull them down with her.
The phone booth of the winds
They call it the phone booth of the winds.
A phone booth set on a cliff in Japan by the ocean.
People come to the phone to call the dead.
They tell the dead not to worry about them, but they should.
They tell the dead that they miss them, and they should.
They tell the dead they will see them again soon, and they will.
And they hang up the phone, cry their tears, and step out of the booth.
Then they run to the cliff and leap over, to lose themselves in the ocean.
The phone never rings.
Serendipidy – Disintegration
I’ve never liked science fiction.
People die far too tidily for my liking. It’s just too sanitised and clean.
Zapped by lasers, vaporised by disintegration rays, or rendered to nothing by molecular disruptors… All very effective, but the recipients either vanish or simply slump to the floor in a nice tidy pose.
Where’s all the blood and guts? Bubbling body fluids, and gory splatters?
You’d think that in the future we could come up with more interesting ways to kill people?
Force fields that slice and dice, ray guns that splurge you over the spaceship walls?
Just, more gore, please!
Weekly Challenge #809 – DISINTEGRATION
RICHARD
Don’t sweat the small things
If there’s one thing we should have learned from Covid, it’s that the smallest things can lead to the breakdown of society and the disintegration of life as we know it.
I’m not talking about the virus…
If you really want to plunge humanity into panic-stricken despair, take away our toilet rolls!
If you want to provoke social unrest and civil disobedience, tell us to wear masks and stand two metres apart, tell us phone masts spread viruses and vaccines are really tracking chips.
If you want to break our will, make us stay at home.
I’d prefer the virus!
TOM
What Could Go Possible Wrong 009
Something about time travel tends to bring out the worst and best of a person. Both extremes flooded Fords brain as he pressed Cevante’s neck. Did he really want to take the time lord out. Sure, he thought, end this endless racing up and down the time line. But wait, Arnesto was his friend, he would give up his life for him. Bout this moment is when the 1st Time Lord to the Queen disintegrated in his hand. “Damn you, you call that Disintegration?” He pressed the stem of his pocket watch and the Taix disintegrated. But the Arms Traven
NORVAL JOE
Before Billbert had a chance to smile smugly at Sabrina’s surprise, she locked her arms around his neck and screamed, “Put me down!”
He equally didn’t want anyone to notice the two of them twenty feet above the ground, or to die from strangulation. He quickly dropped them back to the ground.
“How could you do that to me?” Sabrina shouted at Billbert.
Confused, Billbert said, “It’s not like I froze you in a block of ice or shot you with a disintegration ray. We flew.”
Sabrina stumbled around like the ground shifted beneath her feet. “You don’t know me.”
JARED
Survival
As a species, we Humans had been resilient in all our forms over the many generations since we expanded beyond Earth: Native, Extraplanetary-Evo, GMO-Differentiated, Enviro-Adaptive, Hybridized, and so on. In the four-plus centuries that have passed since we started colonizing the galaxy, we had yet to meet an enemy that we hadn’t defeated or integrated with. Until we met the Cockroaches. Well, we called them that; they called themselves Kodefarian – as far as can be represented in our tongue. Whatever. When we encountered them, there was nothing we could do: their weapons induced entropy in whatever they hit – instant disintegration.
PLANET Z
Landry’s plane was going Mach 2 when it completely disintegrated on him.
Fragments of the fuselage tore Laundry apart.
The fuel pods ignited into a massive fireball, incinerating the shredded pieces of Landry’s body.
A cloud of metal bits, bone shards, and ash rained down.
Investigators had nothing much to work with, most of the plane had turned to dust.
Was it the fuel? A manufacturing defect?
Some strange vibration or harmonic?
Nobody wanted to be the next guy to go up.
So the investigators marked it as a sunspot and closed the file, paying Landry’s widow a big settlement.
A little every day
I swore that I would write one story a day until the day I die.
But, lately, I haven’t been writing them every day.
I go a few days without writing a story, and then I write a few stories to make up for the shortfall.
They’re not good, and I throw them in the trash.
Okay, so I’ve written a story every day, so technically that counts, right?
Or maybe I’m just dying a little inside every day, and time is finally catching up with me.
I’d write more, but this is another one to throw in the trash.
October is
“October is coming,” said the ghost.
The room smelled like burnt hair.
Arthur lit a candle and looked around.
Torn, moldy wallpaper.
Stained carpet.
Rotten wood furniture, a table and a chair.
A rusty knife on the table.
Was that rust? Or was it blood?
Arthur looked for a door, but couldn’t find one.
He felt the walls for a seam.
How did he get here?
Had he been drugged, and put in here, and the walls sealed shut?
Dropped from the ceiling? It looked solid enough.
A trap door? None under the carpet.
“October is here,” said the ghost.
As their king
Henry was never meant to be king.
He was the seventh son of the king.
But one by one, his brothers died.
Sickness. Accidents. War. Assassinations.
Six graves in the royal graveyard.
And, surrounded by guards, Henry standing over them, laying a flower on each.
“Get back inside,” said his father, pushing him.
Being exposed to the outdoors and the risks there was too much.
He stayed inside the castle, no windows, no sunlight.
When his father died, he threw open every shutter.
“Let the sun greet its king!” shouted Henry.
And he fell, an arrow buried in his neck.
Skara Brae
It was 3 days ride from Skara Brae to the castle.
The town priest had soaked our horses’ shoes in holy water, and the weather stayed clear, no bandits crossed our path in the deep woods.
“They fear the red pennant,” said our tracker. “One does not steal from those who ride for the crown.”
The ghosts of the green swamp respect no banners, so we camped on the second night, waited for their wailing to end with the sun’s rise, and crossed the gloom on the third morning.
All was for naught.
The castle had burned to the ground.
Planet of
Over fifty years ago, The Planet of The Apes was released.
Audiences were stunned by the expressiveness of the actors in makeup.
They won some Oscars.
A few sequels came out, then a remake, and then some reboots with digitally-captured performers.
Before, rich people had the idea to keep apes as pets.
You know, like Michael Jackson. Or that Koko sign-language gorilla.
But after the movies came out, more people kept them as pets.
Until they overthrew humanity. And you maniacs, you blew it up!
Ape society took over, they made movies, and worked on The Planet of The Humans.
Bottled up hate
My therapist said not to bottle up my hate.
Which makes sense, because if you bottle up hate, it tends to swell a bit in the heat and break the glass bottle.
It breaks plastic 2-liter bottles, too.
You need to use sturdy cans.
Big olive oil cans work well.
Metal gas cans, and some of the rugged plastic gas containers.
Got a big barrel? That will do.
That’s a lot of hate, a barrel full.
Did you use to have a barrel of fun, and you rolled it out so much, you ran out?
Yeah, keep hate in it.