Weekly Challenge #717 – FAKE

Waiting for a new TV to murder

LIZZIE

The photo was on the table, silent. Undeniable proof.
Nah, it’s fake, someone said.
And yet, it was there, a loud accusation to all those denying it.
No one touched the photo, but everyone looked at it.
They knew it had been taken there, in that sunny apartment, but where exactly?
It’s clean. Nothing. No blood, no footprints, no fingerprints. Leave.
Nothing they could do. And they left.
Years later, breaking down a wall, there she was. There she was… 5 years old and definitely not a fake.
The photo got lost in a mysterious flood in the archive room.

RICHARD

Have a nice day

Every day, I get up, shower, have breakfast and leave for work, where I put on my fake plastic smile, take a deep breath and start the day.

I hate my job, can’t stand my colleagues, and the customers make me borderline suicidal.

The hours are long, the pay is rubbish and job satisfaction is non-existent… But, that fake smile stays fixed in place throughout every transaction, every interaction, every minute of the day.

I turn to the next customer, ramp up the fake smile to a cheerful beam and say my line…

“Welcome, to the happiest place on earth!”

SERENDIPIDY

My husband looked at me aghast.

“What? Seriously… Every time?”

I smirked, “Yes honeybun, every single one was fake. You’ve never been able to satisfy me in that way, and you never will.”

He looked confused, eyes glancing at the chains securing him firmly to the Saint Andrew’s cross, to which I’d bound him tightly.

I answered his unasked question: “No, sweetiepie, none of this is intended to achieve what you have always failed to do, but it is nevertheless, going to bring me a great deal of pleasure!”

I picked up the scalpel, advancing slowly towards his exposed manhood.

TOM

Oh No, Not Again

If I hear the word fake used in casual conversation one more time, I’m going to drive this here number two pencil through their brain. I know the odds I will hit actual functioning gray matter is pretty slim. At least I’ve a chance to diverting the river of verbal chub. I don’t really care if their selected bubbled echo sphere has feeling checked it till it bloods red white and blue. What I want to is a chain of provable facts that led to the postulation being presented. What I want is a discourse of words that haven’t been weaponized.

NORVAL JOE

Billbert hoped his mother would show up soon. Hoping to avoid the subject of how he and Linoliumanda got home from the dance, he asked, “Is that a real Farrari?”
Marrissa rolled her eyes. “No. It’s a fake. I saw you and that funny girl fly away from the school. How do you do that?”
A car with a single headlight turned onto the street. It could be his mother. Billbert said, “We weren’t really flying. That was all fake, you know, done with wires and mirrors.”
“I’m smarter than you think, Billbert,” Marrissa said. “You can’t fake me out.”

TURA

Fake
———
The British Royal Family is going to the dogs. Some look back to Queen Victoria, but really, all she did was sit in the chair too long. She was peak empire and everyone knew it. Lizzie the First started it and it was clogs to clogs in three hundred years. And before her you had the Tudors and Plantagenets smashing the place up like children. Fake monarchy, and a fake aristocracy. These days, you get a peerage for slipping a few bob in the right places. You’re not a real aristocrat unless your family came over in the Norman Conquest.

PLANET Z

Truth is, none of this is real.
I’m not real. You’re not real.
It’s all an illusion.
It’s all in your head.
Or maybe, it’s all in my head.
I have no idea. And neither do you.
There’s no way to prove anything.
So, we just have to agree to deal with each other like this.
Even though neither of us, none of this, is real.
What is real?
I don’t know. I don’t remember.
Maybe I never knew what was real.
So, how do I know this isn’t real?
How you and me and all of this isn’t real?

They always talked

The room had a chair and table bolted to the floor.
And the subject chained to the chair.
We’d play a tape of people screaming for a while.
I’d walk in with a bloody belt sander, and I’d ask them a question.
They wouldn’t talk. They never talked.
“Fine,” I’d say, and plugged in the belt sander.
Thumb the switch and revved it.
Sometimes skimming my arm hair.
I’d let them smell the burn.
“Okay, here we go.”
But the cord wouldn’t reach.
“I need an extension cord,” I’d say. “Need anything while I’m up.”
They talked. They always talked.

Frederick’s

Frederick’s of Hollywood sold naughty clothing.
Frederick’s of Chicago sold guns.
Frederick’s of New York sold electronics.
Frederick’s of Tokyo sold fish by the bucket.
Frederick’s of Berlin sold clocks.
Frederick’s of Marakesh sold slaves.
Frederick’s of Sydney sold souvenirs.
Frederick’s of Guam sold the best sandwiches. The sign on the front said so.
Frederick’s of San Salvador sold stage magician’s props.
Frederick’s of Bombay sold carpet by the yard.
Frederick’s of Seattle sold coffee.
Frederick’s of Rome sold bus passes.
Frederick’s of Waikiki Beach sold pineapples.
Frederick’s of London sold fancy hats.
And Frederick’s of Juneau sold space heaters.

Ashes To

Cameron always felt uncomfortable about who he was.
Or she was.
Cameron’s parents didn’t understand. Nobody did.
Today, some teens get the support they need. And options.
Surgery and hormone therapy instead of wishes and bitter tears
Back then, kids like Cameron didn’t.
Years of self-loathing and wishes that never came true.
Instead of taking the easy way out, Cameron became a mentor.
So many lives touched and changed.
Cameron died the other day.
Ashes in an urn.
We had them injected into hundreds of breast implants.
For teens to use during transition.
Still guiding the lost to find themselves.

The Mirror World

One night, after I had consumed too much coffee, I stayed up for a while and did some cleaning.
The vacuuming was kinda fun. So was cleaning out the bad food from the fridge and the shelves.
But I’ve never been good at cleaning mirrors.
That’s okay. My doppelganger in the Mirror World is just as bad at it as I am.
He uses the same brand of glass cleaner, and an identical rag.
Puts just as much effort into it as I do.
I guess we tried our best, right?
We high-fived each other and…
Where’s that vacuum again?

The runaway

She called herself a robot, but robots don’t run on windup keys.
That’s more of a toy or dolly thing.
Her serial number had been scratched out, but there’s always other in the chassis.
Runaway status.
“I worked in a hospital in the childrens ward,” she said. “I loved them so much.”
She told me about the games the children would play, the adventures they’d pretend to go on.
“But they never got better. So much pain, and they were so alone.”
If she could cry…
Before I wiped her memory, she kissed me on the cheek and thanked me.

The Lemons

When life hands you lemons, make lemonade.
When life hands someone lemons and they wait until they’re rancid and putrid before they dump them in your lap, make lemonade.
And then, make them drink it.
Oh, and rub the rinds in their eyes, too.
If they keep their eyes closed, slash their fingertips with paper and rub the lemon on them.
Maybe with a little salt, too. Salt and lemons.
If the lemons are shrunken and hard, put them in a sock and beat them with the sock.
That should make it easier to rub their eyes with the lemons.

Weekly Challenge #716 – Crunch

Zzzzzzzzzz

RICHARD

Wealth

The crunch of car tyres on gravel is one of those understated signature symbols of the extremely wealthy.

It’s not brash or pretentious, but is nevertheless a sound that makes a profound statement about fiscal superiority.

And, if the car in question smells of tooled leather and is driven by a uniformed chauffeur in gloves and peaked cap, then we’re talking the upper echelons of wealth.

Which is not the case today.

Today, I’m driving, and the gravel is being forcibly scattered from beneath the wheels.

The owner won’t miss it – he’s too loaded to notice it’s been stolen!

LIZZIE

The frog. This frog! It’s a pet. It’s the pet, he said, stressing the word the.
No one believed him, of course. A frog for a pet? That didn’t seem plausible.
Ah, but it’s a magical frog, it crunches.
Crunches, they asked, rolling their eyes and smirking in disdain.
Numbers.
More eye-rolling ensued.
Yes.
A paper was produced. Numbers were supplied. The frog was summoned.
To everyone’s amazement, the frog provided the results and they were correct.
Meanwhile, a pair of eyes was eagerly checking the comings and goings of the frog.
The numbery crunching turned into a crunchy chewing.

TOM

IT Comes With a Free Toy Inside

The advantage of growing up in a home of eight children is the lackness of scrutiny of breakfast food choses. Lordy in a household today a kid would never get away with three bowls of Cap’n Crunch. I’d like to believe my childhood diet cost be a Nobel and a Phd, but I’m not bitter. Well, as least that Master’s degree in advance non-Euclidean geometry died in a well of sugar coated delirium. The disadvantage of growing up in a home of eight children is the years it take to fixed what you though was such a good idea at the time.

SERENDIPIDY

Do you like it smooth, or with a crunch?

I realise that it’s probably a little late to ask you now, after you’ve started eating; but it’s probably the wrong question anyway.

Maybe I should have been asking “Are you deathly allergic to nuts?”, rather than simply making the assumption that you’d be fine with my peanut butter stuffed pastries.

And now, as you lie, choking and gasping for breath, I think that I have my answer to that particular question.

Not to worry… There’s plenty of pastries left.

And with you dead, all the more for me to enjoy!

NORVAL JOE

A car idled in front of Linoliumanda’s house. It was clearly not his mother’s Ford Fiesta with a crunched up front fender. The car that waited on the curb was a cherry red Ferrari convertible, and sitting in the passenger seat was the last person Billbert expected to see.
Marissa climbed out of the car and sauntered up to Billbert. “You refused to dance with me at the school. I saw you dance with that funny girl.”
“That funny girl is my friend, Linoliumanda,” Billbert said.
Marissa narrowed her eyes. “I also saw what you two did after the dance.”

PLANET Z

Dan bought a new car.
It has that lane-keep assist so when he strays over the lines, it shakes his steering wheel,
Of course, when there’s road construction, the crews don’t always scrub out the old lines when putting on the new ones.
So the lane-keep cameras misread the road, and his wheel shakes at the weirdest times.
When you add the collision radar, the adaptive cruise control, and auto-pilot, the car is constantly distracting and second-guessing Dan’s driving.
With all the beeping and shaking and swerving, it was only a matter of time before Dan ran into a tree.

Charlie Played

Charlie played the Birdland.
Everyone then played the Birdland, but Charlie, he played it best.
And he played, man did he played.
He had himself a wife, a girlfriend, and a lover.
Charlie played with Monk. Charlie played with Miles.
Billie and Basie, Quincy and Sammy. And the Duke.
Charlie played with Coltrane. Coltrane!
We’d sit there, drinks all around.
That was the night she shot him.
The wife? The girlfriend? The lover?
I dunno, but she done shot him.
She shot him dead, right there on the stage.
I picked up his horn and played.
Didn’t miss a beat.

Ernst Zundel

Infamous Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel died today.
Despite absolute proof that he lived, I deny that Ernst Zundel ever lived.
Show me photographs, show me documents, show me video.
I’ll still deny that he ever lived.
Dig up his body, dump him out on a table.
Nope. He never lived.
Should you find some form of irrefutable evidence, okay, I’ll concede that he lived.
But not to the extent that he lived.
Not seventy-eight years. A lot less. Maybe seven or eight.
Or even while still in his infancy, mirroring his moral infancy.
But, privately, I’ll deny he ever lived.