Weekly Challenge #708 – WHO CARES?

Myst's brother

LIZZIE

The chair faced a big wooden crate. Fragile. Fragile could mean a lot of things, he thought. Glass. He sat down and leaned forward. Rare wine. He sat back. Do not open it, they said. He stared at it and pondered. He wanted to open it… Porcelain. He tilted his head and tried to read the label. It was wet and blurry. “Screw them…” He stood up and opened the crate. It was filled with ideas, special ones too. The crate was filled with books, something extremely rare those days. He sneaked one out and closed the crate again, smiling.

RICHARD

Manisfesto

It’s election time again, and the politicians are crawling out from their unholy pits of self-gratification to ply their insincere charm and empty promises to a disbelieving electorate.

‘We care about the environment’, they proclaim from the steps of their private jets;

‘We care about employment and a living wage’, they profess, whilst raking in the cash from after-dinner speeches and televised debates;

‘We care about people and their rights’, they protest, whilst turning their backs on the demands of those they serve.

All just words, without meaning.

So, really, who cares?

Who knows?

Does it matter, anyway?

ZACKMANN

Here at Who Cares Retirement Home for the Aging Science Fiction Fan, everyday is like a Sci-Fi convention. You are likely to see our staff dressed as your favorite Science Fiction Characters. Your Doctor could be The Doctor and your reading lights are put on Gallifrey Stands. Cosplay is optional for residents and their guests. No Tribbles but our own Doctor Whooves lives on the other side of the yellow brick road from the main dorm.
A reminder to any staff cosplaying as Klingon unless coloring textiles you are forbidden to use the phrase “It’s a good day to die”

SERENDIPIDY

Ask yourself, ‘Who cares?’

Who cares enough to notice newspapers piling up on your doorstep, the unanswered phone calls, the plaintive cries of your starving cats?

Who cares enough to pay you that visit, to check you’re alright?

Who cares enough to notice your absence at church, the missed appointments and the ceasing of your daily walks in the park?

Nobody cares.

But they will, eventually.

Once the smell of rotting flesh pervades the air, and the maggots and flies infest the street; when the bills remain unpaid, and the litter builds up.

Then, they’ll care!

But far too late.

TOM

It isn’t so much Who cares, as what has been left in their wake. Baba O’Riley, Who’s Next, Pinball Wizard, Won’t Get Fooled Again, My Generation, Behind Blue Eyes, Eminence Front, It’s Hard Love, Reign o’er Me, I Can’t Explain, I Can See for Miles, Boris the Spider, Magic Bus, Squeeze Box, You Better You Bet, Another Tricky Day, Going Mobile, Trick of the Light, Young Man Blues, Long Live Rock, The Acid Queen, Pictures of Lily, The Seeker, I’m Free, The Kids Are Alright, I Can See for Miles, Happy Jack and my favorite Join Together. Yup who cares.

NORVAL JOE

Billbert watched Linoliumanda twirl around the dance floor as the fire spriklers rained water down on her.

Roderick laughed at Billbert and pointed. “You’re going to get soaked if you stand there.”

Billbert shrugged, “Who cares?”

Ms. Frunsio finally encouraged them all to leave the cafeteria and call their parents.

Billbert started to get out his phone. Linoliumanda said, “Let’s fly home.”

“We can’t do that,” Billbert said. “People might see.”

Linoliumanda shrugged, “Who cares?”

“I care,” he said dropping back from the kids around them and waited for them to look away before they floated up into the air.

PLANET Z

The light at the intersection has timing issues.
Two reds isn’t a problem.
Two greens is.
It didn’t take long for a wreck.
A young couple and a cab driver died.
The families sued the city, their lawyers walked away with a lot of money.
The city had to cut budgets, and repair crews went without a cost of living adjustment.
So, they went on strike.
More things broke, more people died, more people sued.
Things fell apart quickly, the cops went on strike, too.
Fire department, too.
We sit and watch the city burn through the night, and laugh,

Never Had

Never had a kid.
Never held my baby in my arms.
My baby.
So precious.
No first tooth.
No first words, first steps.
First day at school.
None at all.
No report cards, nothing but A’s.
Or F’s.
Detentions.
Run-ins with the police.
That’s no so bad, really.
Never having to bail your kid out.
Or identify their body.
Waiting for a match on the transplant list.
As they get sicker… and sicker… and sicker…
Is it selfish of me?
Not to want to feel any of that?
Not to take a chance?
Maybe.
When someone took one on me?

Ganesha

There are many stories as to how the Indian god Ganesha got his elephant head.
But few say what happened to his original head.
Some people assume that it ended up on the body of the elephant from which Shiva replaced his head.
Others say that it was used to make Ganesha Head Soup.
And still others believe that the Eleven Gods of The Three Worlds use his head for football.
The Gods of Fire play The Gods of The Wind, and the winner plays The Gods of The Sky.
But that’s utter nonsense? Where would they get a referee?

Bus your own tables

“BUS YOUR OWN TABLES” says the sign on the front door of the restaurant.
And the cashier at the end of the buffet line reminds every customer to bring their trays to the window for the dishwasher to wash.
But half of the people leave their dirty dishes on the table when they get up to leave.
So, the restaurant owner hired a guy to clear tables.
And he raised prices to pay for the guy.
Some customers complained about the price increase.
And others stopped showing up.
The owner gave up, closed his restaurant, and bought a Subway franchise.

Classical sass

I like to listen to the Classical Music Instrumental station on Amazon Prime Music.
I know most of the tunes, mostly from Bugs Bunny cartoons.
I couldn’t tell you the title of the piece, let alone the composer, although Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart are easy to identify.
And some Chopin and Liszt. Oh, and Pachebel’s Canon in D.
It keeps me calm. And I can work while listening, because they’re all instrumentals.
No words to distract me from the words I’m working with on the screen.
When I’m actually working on work, and not just writing stories like this one.

Remember me

I knew he was sick, but didn’t know he was that sick.
Then, the email came out.
He was sicker than that.
“Don’t be so negative,” people told me. “It’s not as if it’s terminal.”
Then another email comes out, to answer the people wanting to visit.
And it said no visitors, he’s in a lot of pain, and that it would be best to remember him as he was, than how he is now.
Me, I’d rather people remember me as a weak, passive lump in bed, knocked out by morphine.
Than the selfish, rambling asshole I usually was.

The big picture

Some people can’t see the big picture.
That’s because they’re standing on it
The picture is so big, they can’t see it… the whole big picture
They don’t have a viewpoint that allows them to see it.
So, they take the 10,000-foot view.
Only then can they see the big picture.
Oops. Lost a contact. And forgot a spare pair of eyeglasses.
Oh well. Use your smartphone to snap a photo, and then see the big picture when you get to the ground.
What? You dropped your smartphone?
Maybe you don’t need to see the big picture all that badly.

Weekly Challenge #707 – BOOM

Tin

RICHARD

Boom Town

It’s amazing what you can do with clever advertising.

Dingo Gulch was a dead end, no hope, washed out hovel in the back end of nowhere, but the mayor hired a top notch PR company, whose glossy brochures and slick ads sold us as a boom town… And, before you know it, we had prospectors, speculators, investors and entrepreneurs beating down our doors to get a piece of the action.

It didn’t last long, of course, when people realised what a dump Dingo Gulch was, they pulled out sharpish – but not before they’d spent all their cash!

Boom town!

LIZZIE

Boom, and the moon was gone. No one believed it could happen, but it did. The so-called brotherly neighbors from next door, meaning the next galaxy or wherever they came from, threatened to do it and everyone laughed, not a care in the world. Then, it happened. Those damn little green jerks. Ever since they moved in with all that scientific progress, new ideas, new concepts, new gadgets, life was a lot more complicated. That resonant boom was only outmatched by the roaring sound of space ships exploding as they left Earth. Oops! “Should we prepare for war?” someone asked.

SERENDIPIDY

I still hear the boom of artillery, even though the war is done.

I can still smell the acrid tang of napalm, even on the freshest of breezes.

The insistent thud of choppers; the whine and thud of missiles; the staccato clatter of machine gun fire pervades my waking hours, and stirs me from my sleep.

And, over it all, the screams and cries of my fallen comrades; the pungent smell of cordite, sweat and blood.

Even now.

Even after all these years.

And, somehow, I have been forgotten.

For although I was a soldier.

I was also Viet Cong.

—
TOM

Boom

The second best thing to a controlled fire is, wait for it … things that go BOOM. Yup from M80s to Bikini Atoll, boom just can’t help but put a smile on ones face. Of course being on the business end of boom, not so good. As a rule landmines not of the top ten boom list. That’s boom bad. What I’m talking about is a deep pre-adolescent desire to see thing fly apart with sufficient amount of loudness. I still have a boom scar from my gas pool plastic Bismarck explosion. It was a teachable moment for damage radius

NORVAL JOE

Whatever had been used to cause such a boom in the corner of the cafeteria also produced a large amount of smoke.

The smoke continued to rise toward the ceiling, even while Ms. Frunsio ranted about how much trouble all the boys would be in when she found out who had caused the explosion.

As it reached the ceiling it set off the smoke detectors and the sprinklers kicked on.

Boys and girls ran from the cafeteria, screaming and covering their heads, except for Billbert who stayed to watch Linoliumanda dancing to music only she could hear, water raining down.

PLANET Z

Every time Ricky Ka sacks a quarterback, he gets down on one knee and waits for the crowd to shout KA-BOOM!
And he jumps up with his arms raised.
He racked up a dozen sacks in his rookie year, twenty in his next year.
Defensive player of the year award.
Again and again.
KA-BOOM! KA-BOOM! KA-BOOM!
Playoff wins, two Super Bowl rings.
Then came the injuries.
Knee surgery. Shoulder surgery.
Back from rehab, and then done for good.
Hall of Fame ceremony, he got down on one knee.
KA-BOOM.
He held his chest, fell over, and never got back up.

Metric metrics

Fat Freddy was so fat, he couldn’t see the numbers on the scale.
So, he bought a talking scale.
No, the talking scale didn’t groan or say “Only one at a time!”
It just told him his weight.
In kilograms.
Which is a smaller number than pounds.
Freddy thought it was telling him his weight in pounds.
When he used his treadmill, it was set to use kilometers.
So he thought he was walking more miles than he actually walked.
He died of a massive heart attack.
His family paid for the funeral in dollars.
American dollars, not Canadian dollars.

Pedantic

Nobody at the dictionary company likes to work with Santos.
If you looked up the word “pedantic” in the dictionary, you wouldn’t just see a picture of Santos.
You’d see a picture of Santos arguing with Daniel Webster about the definition of pedantic.
Several editions of the dictionary missed publication dates because he wouldn’t stop arguing.
He was so obsessive about splitting hairs and tearing his hair out over the most minute detail, he ended up bald.
It left him without nits to pick, so he turned to nitpicking others.
The publisher gave Santos a final word to define: fired.