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Weekly Challenge #645 – Win

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:

TURA

Win
———
General Wei addressed an cadre of aspirants to the Supreme Guard, saying, No kingdom can stand without warriors, but if there is even one worthy of the name, then the kingdom may be preserved.

A student asked, What is a warrior?

General Wei answered, A warrior is someone who wins. In everything that a warrior does, every thought and action cuts through to winning. Death is the only thing that can defeats a warrior.

The student asked, Shall one day, even death itself yield?

General Wei drew his sword and sliced the student’s head off. The other students were enlightened.

RICHARD

#1 – You win some…

“Some you win… And some you lose!”, smiled the croupier as he turned his cards over to reveal a full house.

It was a rough night.

I was out of cash; my credit limit had been extended – twice – and, unless I could win my car back, I’d be walking home tonight.

I scribbled a note on a napkin, signing it with a flourish – “All in. I stake my soul!”

He smiled again and dealt my cards.

He wasn’t smiling when I revealed I held a royal flush!

And that, my friends, is how I won Satan’s soul.

#2 – Win, win

I’ve never believed in the concept of a ‘win-win’ situation. I don’t care what the outcome may look like, there’s always going to be a loser, somewhere along the line.

It’s basic physics: You can’t make something out of nothing; every positive has to have a negative, and; every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

Some may believe the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, some may talk about The Butterfly Effect, some will always look for hidden strings attached.

As for me: I just assume somebody is always a loser.

I know, because it’s almost always me!

#3 – Winner!

If my numbers should ever come up and I win big time, I’ve already decided that I’ll tell no-one.

I’ll just quietly quit my job and head off to see the world on the premise of being offered a fabulous job opportunity abroad, or something along those lines.

I’ll probably write a few anonymous cheques for good friends and family, and they’ll never know their benefactor, or where it’s come from.

And whatever’s left over…

Will keep me secure and happy, for the rest of my life.

So, if I suddenly go missing.

Promise me, you won’t tell anyone why!

CHARLIE

What’s the criteria? How could he win the devotion of his listeners? Would he have to do calisthenics in the radio studio while some listeners tuned in to the live, video feed? Would he have to go on for a five minute rant about his personal “journey”?

His journey included going on a plant based diet, running the trails in the woods, riding his bike on marathons, writing letters to his young son, or reminding us daily that he was entering the eighth month of his personal journey.

I prefer solo ministries. The one in my head suits me fine.

Most of his evening news show is tedious, as there is a lot of boring and repetitious discussion about the current news and way too much news about Seattle politics, including the amount of money being wasted on managing drugs, the homeless, bicycle trails, automobile traffic and sports stadiums.

I like it when he talks about his old girlfriends in Texas. He always reminisces about Stacy. Stacy never asked questions, never said no to anything new, always had her own money, always smelled like fresh flowers, and had a good vocabulary.

Stacy was the girl that would win his heart.

LIZZIE

At the end of the year, everyone who had turned 18 received an envelope in the mail. It contained a ticket and a note. The note had instructions about what they had to do – go to the Orange Plaza, place yourself within 10 meters of the Beam to travel through time, and wait.
And they waited.
Suddenly, the beam buzzed.
All the kids were turned into mush.
No one had told them that every 18th group had to be sacrificed to feed the Beam.
The tickets were scattered on the floor, a sad reminder of what they could’ve won.

TOM

Third Best Moment in my Life

I’m a gamer. If I listed the games I’ve played it would be way longer the ten, one hundred stories. My favorite was Tempest, but that one wasn’t the one that I consider my best personal win. The 1985 Gauntlet on the home computer was a transient experience. The last level of the game was an open field edged with cave openings you could run into for safety. And what was I running from. A giant winged devil that with a mere touch sucked 1000 hit points a second. Dead in seconds. So how did you win the game Tom?

JEFFREY

The High-Tech Train
by Jeffrey Fischer

Washington’s Metro system touts its new 7000-series cars as the latest and greatest in subway transit. Maps can change dynamically, showing the next stop and each subsequent stop on the line. Announcements are made via a robot voice instead of the driver, so passengers have a fighting chance to understand the content. Each car is outfitted with a small monitor that shows ads touting the Metro system – although it’s far from clear that this is an improvement in anyone’s life – along with specific information about the next stop: whether the stop has a parking garage, car sharing, and so on. One day the monitor displayed a box in the middle of the screen and everything, including the ads, froze. Sure enough, a closer inspection of the screen showed an error message and a suggestion to reboot the system in an oddly-familiar font and format. Good ol’ Windows XP – don’t ever change!

Winner Take All
by Jeffrey Fischer

Zach and Tommy decided to play a game. “Whoever can hurt himself the most without crying wins. We’ll take turns,” Zach said.

Even stoned, Tommy thought this was a bad idea, but he didn’t want to lose face in front of much-cooler Zach. “Okay, I guess. I’ll go first.” Tommy scraped his knuckles until they bled across a rock.

“You call that hurting yourself?” Zach took out a pen knife and stabbed himself in the palm. Tommy ripped off a fingernail. Zach used the knife to cut off the tip of his pinkie. Tommy jumped off a small cliff, onto the rocks below, ripping up his knee and spraining his ankle. Zach thought for a moment, then reached in his backpack for a gun. He shot himself in the chest. With his last breath, he said, “What do you have to say to that, Tommy?”

Tommy looked at the corpse. “I win.”

SERENDIPITY

I call it The Paradox Game – something to pass the time on a Sunday afternoon, to stave off boredom.

It’s very simple – you pedal, to generate the charge that keeps the electromagnet, holding you suspended and safe. Stop pedalling, and you’ll fall to your death.

The faster you pedal, the stronger the charge, the safer you are.

But your body completes the circuit.

And the faster you pedal, the stronger the charge, and the greater the agony.

You might say it’s a no-win situation.

But surely, if you survive, you win?

Either way, I am the real winner here.

JON

Winning Is Everything

Jon DeCles

The only good win is the long term win, the one that doesn’t require you to keep looking over your shoulder to see if the relatives of the Viking you slew last fall are coming to get you in springtime, or if the team that you defeated at the end of the season has been training a hundred times harder than you to topple you from first place.

That means the best win is the win/win, where everybody feels like a winner and nobody feels like a loser.

Why bother winning if everybody wins?

Well, it’s a lot tougher game.

NORVAL JOE

Acting like the broom did all the work, Billbert leaned in and shot forward like he wanted to win a race.
Linoliumanda squeeled with excitement and squeezed her arms tighter around his chest.
Billbert had never had a girl hold him so tight, and he liked it. He flew above the trees then doubled back over the houses, invisible in the moonless night sky.
As they approached Linoliumanda’s home, a police car pulled up.
They landed two houses away and walked toward the policeman as Mr. Withybotham ran out of the house, shouting, “There’s the boy who kidnapped my daughter.”

PLANET Z

When Ted was a kid, he was a fan of the Minnesota Vikings.
The Minnesota Vikings have never won the Super Bowl.
Still, every year, he prayed for the Vikings to go to the Super Bowl and win.
But they never did.
Ted played football in high school. And he was good.
Good enough to get a college scholarship.
And then drafted into the NFL.
By the Browns. A team other than the Vikings.
“TRADE ME TO THE VIKINGS!” screamed Ted at his agent.
He refused to play for the Browns.
And shot himself.
He was given a Viking funeral.

George the Pirate Recruiter

George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
So, they made him go to high schools as a recruiter.
Back in the day, you could send out press gangs to shangai men for crews, but these days the competition for talent was fierce.
George would try to explain the benefits of being a pirate to the students: treasure, adventure, and occasional romance.
Legally, he was obligated to tell them about the drawbacks, too: scurvy, no medical or dental plans, and a high mortality rate.
Nobody signed up. But at George got to pillage a few trophy cases.

Johnny Fuckyou

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.

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

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

Jon DeCles

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.