They say that watching paint dry is boring, but have you ever done bodypaint?
That’s not boring to watch, although you’re not really watching the paint dry.
You’re looking at the body.
The best bodypainting doesn’t look naked at all, but you still sense that something’s unusual about it.
And then you see it. And you can’t unsee it.
That person is naked, and what you thought were clothes are actually painted on.
Or stripes. Or some other pattern.
That’s a powerful magic, really.
And here we are, you and me.
And some paint and a brush.
Who goes first?
Orlando
The blood wasn’t dry in Orlando before the agendas came out.
Talking points, for every color in the political spectrum.
Gun control, immigration, gay rights, terrorism…
Accusations without solutions, calls for togetherness and understanding that end up just polarizing people even more.
I’d say that pointing fingers is more dangerous than pointing guns, but a pointed finger never gets anybody killed.
Unless its to point out more people to hate. And shoot.
Oh, is the blood dry yet?
Hey, can you take a photo of me?
It’s this button here. It’ll focus automatically.
Take a few, in case I blink.
Laundry Kitten
Sometimes, I wake up early to do my laundry before work.
One morning, as I was doing my laundry, I came across a tiny wet kitten.
The kitten had either fallen into the pool or been thrown in.
Either way, the little thing was sitting on the sidewalk.
I leaned down, extended a hand, and the kitten mewed and approached.
I pet the kitten, and then went back in for a can of chicken.
The kitten rubbed against my legs, but eventually ate the chicken.
By the time I finished laundry, the kitten was gone.
I hope that it’s alright.
God she
Feminists are right when they claim that God is a she, but God’s not the maternal type.
God’s a washed-up old barfly, the last out the door at Last Call every night.
You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.
So, who does God stay with?
Whoever she manages to pass out on, she always manages that.
A mumbling, wrinkled old hag on the sofa.
She’s never there the next morning.
Where did she go? Did she steal anything?
Who knows?
Until the bar opens again, when she’s the first in the door, ready for another night.
Weekly Challenge #655 – Brace
Welcome to the 100 Word Stories podcast at oneadayuntilthedayidie.com.
This is the Weekly Challenge, where I post a topic and then challenge you to come up with a 100 word story based on that topic.
We’ve got stories by:
LIZZIE
“Brace yourselves for the worst storm you have ever experienced. The winds will be cyclonic, the rain torrential. You may want to get these raincoats on. The waterproof boots will be extremely helpful too. Oh, and I advise you to wear these glasses to protect your eyes from flying debris. You’ll never forget this experience, I assure you.”
The group was skeptical, considering how beautiful and peaceful everything looked.
“It better be epic. We paid a lot of money for this.”
After a long wait, the only thing that flew was Steven, the guide of the weather-themed park.
RICHARD
Brace
I am what you might call a very frequent flyer. Almost every working day, and most weekends, will see me on a plane to some far flung destination.
There’s only so much you can do on a flight: Once you’ve seen all the in-flight movies, read the brochures from cover to cover, and spent far too much time sleeping, boredom becomes a huge problem.
Being something of an artist, I’ve taken to altering the emergency procedure cards.
Then, mid-flight, when no-one’s looking, I shout ‘Brace, brace!’ and laugh at the ridiculous and obscene poses I’ve instructed everyone to assume!
SERENDIPITY
I’m a great believer in transparency and openness: It can make such a refreshing change from the nonsense that’s constantly peddled as fact, every day, in every situation.
We all know politicians lie, there’s no such thing as a free lunch, and no bargain is too good to be true. There are always strings attached and when we say, ‘with the greatest respect’, respect it couldn’t be further from the truth.
So why mess about and lie? Let’s be honest and tell it like it is.
That’s why I’m warning you…
This is going to hurt.
A lot!
Brace yourself.
ASPEN
A world at war…bombs, shootings, death surrounded the soldier. Much unknown to the family at home with little communications and the few that there was were weeks even months between. Nothing left but to wait and wonder if the dear loved one was wounded, captured, dead or alive.
The mother gazed down the dirt road day after day waiting for her son to return many of which she would turn in at night after not seeing her son walk the path. Finally, the day came, out the window, she saw her son but a different version limping wearing a brace.
TOM
Winking at Your Discords
“Have lost a brace of kinsmen,” said the Prince, “All are punished.” I was just 14, I’d like to have called it my first date, but it was actually a hook-up, decades before the term moved into modern American English. A brace of kinsmen, the language was somewhat fun, when we read it in freshmen English class, but when it was delivered on the wide silver screen it hammer home, lost, folly, and how damning social conventions can be. Before Zeffirelli I had mild interest in words, after 1968, a deep devotion. If words lose their meaning, all are punished.
JON
Salvation
By
Jon DeCles
Nomily braced the door open with Kevin’s body. She could not risk the growing wind blowing it closed and trapping her in the little bunker once she had finished.
She took out the small notebook in which she had written down Dr. Winslow’s instructions and began to carefully enter the complex pattern of numbers on the several keypads, breathing slowly and focusing her attention as completely as she could, despite the danger. In the back of her mind she retained the thought of how preposterous it was that she was, perhaps, going to be the savior of all of Humankind.
Dispute
By
Jon DeCles
No dispute was possible about the matter. The young upstart had rebelled against the crown and he must die before he did England any more damage. Moreover, he must not be allowed into the presence of the Queen. If once they were together he would look at her with those exquisite eyes, give her that smile, and she would commute his sentence of death. He held in thrall the heart of the most intelligent woman alive.
Therefore, the ring, which she had given Essex as final pleading against his pride, must not reach her. Stealing the salvatory ring, he fled.
NORVAL JOE
“Brace yourself,” Billbert told Linoliumanda as they landed on the eves. They crawled back through her bedroom window.
Billbert looked at the turtle clock by Linoliumanda’s bed. “We’ve been gone forty-five minutes. Your dad is going to freak out.”
As if on cue, a knock came at the door.
Linoliumanda said, “Brace yourself.”
She grabbed Billbert by the head and planted a kiss on his lips and held it until Billbert ran out of breath. She mussed his hair and then her own before she opened the door.
Her father took in the scene and demanded, “What’s going on here?”
PLANET Z
FDR’s legs were paralyzed by a bout of Polio.
So, he wore braces, and learned to drive a car by using hand controls.
He challenged himself to walk with braces and canes from his front door, down the road, to the mailbox at the front gate.
It was a quarter of a mile.
Despite trying day after day, putting himself through the grueling and painful exercise, he never managed to make it all the way there.
Oh, he pushed himself hard, but he never made it before finally giving up.
And even if he did, how would he get back?
Blow it up
It’s not every day that you see a star explode.
We parked the ship a safe distance from the explosion, raised our deflector shields, and watched as a bright light erupted in the middle of our long-distance telescopes.
Everything in the system was incinerated.
Solar heat and charged mass spread out in all directions.
Then, nothing.
We sent a subspace message back to headquarters that the system had been annihilated.
“Good,” they said. “That’ll teach ’em to miss three payments in a row.”
We lowered shields, charged up our power reserves, and set a course for the next deadbeat system.
Janis
After every concert, every night, Janis shot up.
She shot up a lot, more and more every night.
She tried to kick the habit in Rio. But she started again.
A lot of other performers died from overdoses.
Blind Owl Wilson.
Jimi Hendrix.
“My people are pioneer stock,” she said. “They came across country and settled in Texas. They’re tough. I won’t die like that.”
But she did.
They found her by the side of her hotel bed, dead from an overdose.
Where are her ashes?
Did they ever make it back to Texas?
Did they ever make it home?
Mindy Miller
The Mindy Miller Show has been going strong for 75 years.
There used to be a real Mindy Miller, but she had issues, and she kept making all kinds of demands.
The network owned her likeness and name, so the network dumped her and replaced her with a clone.
Sadly, the clone had replication errors, so the studio built a robot.
It was pretty lifelike, too, and it suffered less breakdowns than the real Mindy Miller.
Eventually, they replaced that with a computer-generated hologram.
A friendly, tireless virtual extroverted lovable chatterbox.
And best of all, you can turn her off.
Therapy
I haven’t always been so well-adjusted.
For a while, I had a therapist. And he did free association
Well, kinda. He just kept shouting “Buckminster.”
I’d say “Fuller” and he called the cops on me.
I now realize he wasn’t a lousy therapist.
I was just too possessive, and I followed him everywhere.
He’d lost his dog, and was out looking for him.
It’s funny, looking back at these things, and remembering them.
Okay, so I stole his dog, but Buckminster is a really good dog.
Although after every time I say his name, I keep wanting to say “Fuller.”
Turing test
After computing hardware and programming advanced to the point where we could beat the Turing Test, the next challenge was to create an artificial body to put that intelligence into that would fool a human.
Unlike the intelligence test, the body test was a lot more hands on.
Scientists were asked to fuck a series of robots and humans, and then were asked which ones were human and which were robots.
There were occasional glitches, resulting in broken bones, severe lacerations, and accidental beheadings.
And too many scientists would say “I’m still not sure, can I try that one again?”