After every touchdown, the player raises a prayer to the sky.
And when a player is hurt, they all take a knee and bow their heads.
They do the same after every game.
Johnny Manziel was the cocky and brash young phenom who wanted to drink and party more than play the game.
Released by his team, dumped by his agent, and wanted by nobody.
Cast into the wilderness.
Where are all of these so-called brothers keepers now?
Why do they let their brother wallow in sin?
Maybe if he wasn’t a shitty quarterback, they’d do more than just pray.
The Wall
Long ago, back when this land was forest, Castor McDonegal laid the first stone.
Others brought stones and placed them by Castor’s stone.
As Castor and his tribe cut down the trees to build their homes, the stone wall grew around the village.
Over the generations, the wall rose higher, and it protected us and kept us safe.
Enemies tried to fire arrows and rocks over the wall, but the wall was too high.
We fire rocks and arrows down at them, or lock them between the gates and murder them with burning oil.
Walk this wall with pride, soldier.
Nineties
My grandmother spent her last twenty years in the care of my aunt, my parents, and then a retirement home.
She suffered from dementia, and was only occasionally lucid.
In her nineties, the doctors determined that she had breast cancer.
Why were they checking her for it in the first place?
The hospital performed surgery, and removed the tumor easily.
Meanwhile, people across the country… across the world don’t even have basic medical care.
So many are sick, or die young before they have a chance to live.
But it’s different when it’s family… it’s different when it’s you.
Right?
Sweet taste of death and murder
Every time a Palestinian stabs, shoots, runs over, or bombs Jews, the streets of Arab neighborhoods fill with celebration.
People hand out candies to symbolize the sweet taste of martyrdom and death.
Nobody condemns these barbaric and bloodthirsty customs, not even the Palestinian Dentists Association.
“As long as they brush their teeth afterwards,” say the dentists, and they fire their guns into the air with joy.
Despite skyrocketing diabetes rates, the Palestinian Medical Union refuses to condemn the passing around of candy.
“In Paradise, Allah will provide all the insulin shots you need, with 72 virgin nurses to administer them!”
Purple Rain
When Prince died, memorials appeared everywhere, celebrating the man’s music and work.
Online tributes rolled through Facebook and Twitter. Photos and videos and memes.
Point and click grieving, shallow little emotional coughs.
Dr. Odd came up with a plan to generate purple rain storms over Minneapolis, Prince’s hometown.
It worked, and purple rain began to fall from the sky.
And kept falling.
Minneapolis was drenched in purple torrents.
The purple waters rose higher and higher, and they washed away the city.
By the time Dr. Odd stopped the storms, nothing was left.
Well, except St. Paul, but nobody goes there.
Weekly Challenge – Charlie
The mask protected me from the pinprick of the needle targeted at the height of my face in the bathroom stall. The contents of the syringe would put me out of sync and unable to function for two weeks. I was being singled out for the large crop of wine grapes I planned to process into my famous, Rose wine.
A drive to the print shop to expose the Darling family was scheduled. I headed for the terminal to catch a flight to New Jersey where I would hire the crew I needed to teach the Darling family a lesson.
#2
When Brenda exited the terminal in her darling, little polka dot print dress, I said I would drive her to the house. I gave her one scarlet rose and drove quickly to show her the grapes that we would harvest this year.
I felt a little out of sync, but a pinprick of passion in my heart tore the mask of candor away from my face, and I confessed to her that I had cheated on her while she was away getting a dilation and curettage followed by a tubal ligation.
Brenda was a real sport and a real trooper.
Weekly Challenge #644 – PICK TWO Mask, Pinprick, Out of sync, Grapes, Rose, Drive, Print, Darling, Terminal
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
Darling Terminal
She checked her ticket for the tenth time. Stop it! Yes, you have it. She wanted to start a new life without any recollections of the past.
The monitors showed line after line, sometimes too quickly for her to read. Good thing they also used the artificial voice system blaring out information. The flights went out one after the other. And then the system had a burnout moment.
Her flight was called out but to a different destination. She didn’t care. That was her best decision ever. Many years later, she still remembered how he looked, standing at the terminal.
TURA
The train departs from Centraal, a triple-expansion iron colossus drawing a line of three-storey carriages on a double railway track. When it reaches Mitteweg, it has reduced to a single-track engine, racing as if to compensate with speed for its former magnificence. At last the conductor announces, “Terminal, Eindstation. Tout changer, alles overstappen.” Here, the train is a poor thing of more smoke than steam, for at Terminal the steam engine has only just been invented. You may hire a carter to drive onwards, but tourists mostly sightsee around the neighbourhood, then take the train back to the present day.
JEFFREY
The Faces of Intolerance
by Jeffrey Fischer
When masked Antifa thugs smash windows, taunt cops, and assault others, they feel smug and act invincible. Unmask them, however, and the swagger turns to sour grapes about how losing their anonymity is “unfair.” Take a good look at those faces: they’re the brown shirts of the political left, uneducated and gullible, the ground troops of an ideological war that others run for money and power. The puppet masters in the media and political offices pronounce that country borders are racist, that the police are racist, that conservatives are racist. This justifies assaults on those who don’t share the group’s extreme philosophy. When arrested and unmasked, however, their anger turns to confusion. They failed to understand the consequences of accepting lies as truth.
RICHARD
Undated
The older I get, the more chaotic my life becomes.
There’s nothing wrong with my body clock – I know perfectly well when it’s time to sleep, eat and deal with the other necessities of life – my faculties haven’t faded quite that much.
However, my body calendar is a different matter altogether – it’s completely out of sync with reality.
I’ve no idea what day it is, I get confused about when to put the rubbish out, and, to my shame, I never know my wife’s birthday.
She, of course complains like hell.
But it’s really just sour grapes.
SERENDIPITY
It’s the little things that matter the most.
Even the smallest of things: The most inconspicuous, infinitesimal and insignificant occurrences in life can have devastating outcomes.
Take that pinprick, for example… The one you barely felt and almost instantly put out of your mind, dismissing it as ‘nothing much at all’.
You really shouldn’t ignore it.
And if you understood the dire consequences of inaction, I can guarantee you wouldn’t be quite so dismissive.
There are all sorts of nasty things that can be delivered by means of a hypodermic needle; and in your case, I’m afraid that it’s terminal.
TOM
No Name
They’d been all but forgotten by the young queen and her prince. Of course they’d attended the grand wedding. Each had been given a golden pick during the reception, but that was long ago. One by one as each of the original seven had passed-on a black velvet cover was placed over the axe head. Happy, the number two dwarf, was gone. When word reached Snow White she made her way to the humble home of her youth. Since no one way left to cover the pick, it fell to the queen to place the velvet cover over pick two.
JON
A Lady’s Regret
By
Jon DeCles
She was beautiful in her mask covered in roses, but it was the pinprick of a rose thorn, given to her unknowing by her darling prince, that delivered the poison that put her in this terminal condition.
The print on the page of her book went blurry as her weakened eyes went out of sync. She knew she could not drive her little trap through the fields of grapes to his chateau as she had planned. She had dressed as the Specter of the Rose to surprise him. He made such fine rose wine.
But she had made fine enemies.
NORVAL JOE
A Lady’s Regret
By
Jon DeCles
She was beautiful in her mask covered in roses, but it was the pinprick of a rose thorn, given to her unknowing by her darling prince, that delivered the poison that put her in this terminal condition.
The print on the page of her book went blurry as her weakened eyes went out of sync. She knew she could not drive her little trap through the fields of grapes to his chateau as she had planned. She had dressed as the Specter of the Rose to surprise him. He made such fine rose wine.
But she had made fine enemies.
PLANET Z
They took me to a room.
Rose was there with a mask over her whole face to help her with her breathing.
The diagnosis was terminal.
Day after day, I came to see her and bring fresh flowers.
But she was fading, and one day, she was gone.
“So, Mr. Melvin, what arrangements do you have planned for Betty?”
“Melvin? My name is Smith. And this is Rose. Isn’t it?”
They took off the mask. Not Rose.
“Oh, um… I think there’s been a mistake… didn’t they tell you…”
The hospital’s attorneys worked quickly to find where they’d sent Rose.
Iron Man
When I was young, my neighbor Brian was so into comic books, he stuck a battery and a magnet in his chest so he could be like Iron Man.
He spent a month in the hospital, and when he came out, they taped oven mitts on to his hands and kept him sedated.
And no comic books.
Still, he’d ask me if he could read my comic books.
“Well, I don’t think Iron Man is good for you,” I’d say. “But Superman should be fine, right?”
No, not really. He thought he could fly, and jumped off of the roof.
Plenty
You have plenty of things to write with.
You have plenty of paper.
You have plenty of pencils and pens.
You have plenty of apps on your smartphone and tablet.
You have plenty of space on your laptop.
You have plenty of time to write something.
Ideas? Well, okay. You don’t have any of those.
So, steal from someone else.
Pick up a book. Watch a movie.
Sit in a mall and listen to all the bullshit in people’s lives.
Then just change the names around.
I hope you have plenty of money for a lawyer if you get caught.
Party in pants
There’s a party in my pants, and you’re all invited.
I sent out invitations weeks ago.
Not via email. That’s rude and cheap and crass.
Formal invitations with scented paper, expensive ink.
Carried by a footman in a tuxedo, who’d hand-deliver the message and wait for the response.
And there were true RSVP return cards and envelopes.
The whole fancy thing. No expense spared.
Well, except for the pants.
They’re kind of old.
But then, it’s a retirement party.
For my pants. Which I need to retire and replace with new pants.
I’ll have a welcome party for them soon.