The Eighty-Five Chicago Bears.
Greatest team ever.
Heroes forever.
But bodies, broken by battle, don’t last.
Their commanders fall to dust.
One day.
Mike Ditka will die.
And when he gets to Heaven.
To face his maker.
God will stuff him into a football.
And hand him to Walter Payton.
Who will run the ball in for a touchdown.
On every play.
In the Super Bowl.
Every Super Bowl.
Past, present, and future.
Call his number.
Put four men on him.
Five. Six.
All eleven men.
Every man you can throw at him.
Touchdown. Touchdown.
Payton scores his touchdown.
Cubit
The cubit is the distance from the bottom of the elbow to the tip of the middle finger.
This was an ancient Egyptian unit of measurement, along with the finger, foot, fist, and spam.
But surveyors had different body measurements, so measurement was a somewhat inaccurate science.
Standardization came when the pharaoh insisted that the measurements be based off of his body measurements.
However, it wasn’t easy getting time with the pharaoh to measure land or cloth.
And he tended to execute surveyors who dragged him around in the mud.
So, they found a similarly-built surveyor, and dragged him around.
Jump on beds
It’s fun to jump on the bed.
Like a trampoline.
That’s why we do it.
It’s not fun to jump on the chair.
Chairs break and fall apart.
That’s why we don’t do it.
It’s not fun to jump on people, either.
They tend to scream and bleed and get really messy.
But they break in to our homes.
And jump on our beds. And chairs.
Leave! Jump on your own beds and chairs!
Police just catch them and release them.
They break in again. And jump on our beds.
So, we jump on them.
And they bleed. And bleed.
Weekly Challenge #632 – TIP
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:
RICHARD
Bad Advice
“Take a tip from me”, my father would say. “Never get involved with women, drugs, gambling or booze, and you’ll live a long, healthy and happy life, just like me.”
Unfortunately, it seems you can take advice too literally…
My mother threw me out on the streets when I refused to have anything to do with her; I refused medication when I contracted pneumonia; and when consequently admitted, unconscious to hospital, my lack of health insurance – which you’ll agree, is gambling – saw me back on the streets almost immediately.
And I can’t even drown my sorrows.
Thanks dad!
CHARLIE
I’ve got a tip for the warden that will be in charge of the imprisonment of Weinstein, Cosby and Freeman. “Above all, avoid letting anyone near the three named prisoners. Don’t let anyone pump them full of meth, steroids, sildenafil, and B-12. After a few days pass, they will be at each other like Spanish Pirates on native women in the Caribbean.”
This, of course, would be a very cruel deed, and the staff would have to keep things on the down low.
The female officers could be trusted to be discrete, and would have access to professionally produced DVDs.
LIZZIE
What should I do? The green is fading away. The red is taking over. A man is hanging from the big oak, swinging horribly. His blood is pooling on the ground. And I don’t know what to do. I just hide in this tree. The magic is gone. The magic is gone… The man has been there for a while. I didn’t see who did it. I was hiding, hiding in this tree. And I hid for so long that I am now the tree. I am not hanging, but I am dead too. Tell me, what should I do?
JEFFREY
At the Track
by Jeffrey Fischer
Alan leaned over the rail, urging his horse to victory. The horse finished dead last, and Alan tore his betting ticket in two. So much for the great tip he had gotten from the old guy who looked as though he spent his days at the track, studying each race with great intensity. This was the fifth race in a row the old guy had whispered a name to Alan, and the fifth race in a row where that name had finished out of the money. A Magic 8 Ball would have been just as helpful.
A second old man materialized at the rail, next to Alan. “Let me guess,” Alan said, “you have a tip for me.”
“Yeah,” the old man said, “I do. Don’t take betting advice from strangers.“
SERENDIPITY
I like to keep the cops on their toes – give them a little something to keep them occupied; nothing of much consequence, but a steady stream of minor crime to tie up their resources and embroil them in paperwork. Because whilst they’re distracted by the small things, it keeps them off my back, and me off the radar.
So I lower myself to the occasional break in, the odd burglary and casual mugging, tying up police resources, time and energy.
They never realise that it’s only the tip of the iceberg.
Below which lies blackmail, extortion, torture and murder!
TOM
A 100 years ago my grandfather attached to the 2nd division was fighting in the Belleau Woods. His division met up with the 5th Marines. They moved on Hill 142. In the middle of this a jarhead from NY starts talking about what he’s going to do when he gets home. Pretty normal practice. “Hey Kosick, got a tip for you. ATnT.” A Year later my grandfather’s a junior accountant in the ATT Chicago office buying ATT stocks pennies on the dollar. Didn’t work out a well for my other grandfather, who lost his shirt trying to corner the wheat market.
DANNY
Dad flinches as the tip of the dialysis needles are placed in his arm. “Get me out of here,” he laments, not understanding he still has over 2 hours left on the dialysis machine. The fidget monster sits restless, irritable, and discontent in a persistent state of wide awake stupid, not knowing the date or where he is. I sit with him for the full duration of treatment to prevent him from getting up and tearing the needles out his arm. When Dialysis is over, I take a content Dad home, because he is unable to remember where he has been.
NORVAL JOE
Linoliamanda ran and hugged her scowling father.
When she looked back, Billbert tipped his head and said, “See ya Friday.”
On his way home, he pictured the shreds of plastic in his pocket and said, “Fly.”
Nothing happened.
Standing in his kitchen, he held the shreds in his hand and said, “Fly.”
The plastic only settled to the floor.
He threw the remains of the bag into the garbage beneath the sink.
“Fly in there,” he muttered.
To his surprise, something behind the garbage can buzzed.
“Fly?” he asked.
The exposed tip of a white plastic grocery bag fluttered wildly.
JON
A Titanic Romance
By
Jon DeCles
The trouble with the tip was that it was going to tip the balance of what was in his wallet in favor of his not being able to afford the ride home. He could walk her from the restaurant to her house, and walk from there to the subway, but he could not walk to Germantown where he was living, a distance practicably reachable only by train.
If he didn’t tip the waitress he would be a schmuck, which would tip Mary off to the fact that he was out of work. Hope punctured by the tip of the iceberg.
PLANET Z
Back in college, I had a summer job delivering pizzas.
I could have been a pizza maker, but it was summertime in a building with one wall unit air conditioner and a huge pizza oven.
Better to risk getting attacked or robbed.
Besides, that’s how you got the tips, right?
The store had a computer to track customers and orders.
And if they were good tippers or not.
The owner didn’t like it when we tracked tips, so we disguised them in the fax number field.
Nobody ever faxed in an order. Heck, we didn’t even have a fax machine.
Braces
When I was a kid, if you needed to get your teeth straightened, you had to get braces mounted on your teeth.
Rubber hands and a headgear assembly controlled the tension, and every month you’d go in for tightening and adjustment.
Now, you can get your teeth scanned, and they’ll 3-D print a series of clear plastic guides that align them.
No more painful mounting and twisting of the braces.
No more disgusting rubber bands.
No more ugly headgear.
And no more picking up spy signals from outer space.
My orthodontist smiles, says “Da! Is good?” and offers me vodka.
Winehouse
What good is a bodyguard
When you’re staring at a body on the floor?
She smoked, she drank.
She fucked around.
She took pills, she shot herself up with all kind of shit.
Tattoos to cover up the worst of the needle tracks.
The scars. The bruises.
Cameras everywhere, sucking it all in.
The famous singer, who didn’t sing.
Everyone, shouting her name.
She’s not moving. She’s not breathing.
Wake up. Wake up.
The bodyguard shoves the cameras aside, lets the stretcher in.
Covered with a sheet, loaded into the ambulance.
Oh no.
You couldn’t protect her from herself.
Breakfast Slow – Thirteenth Anniversary
I wake to the smell of hot buttermilk biscuits.
I open my eyes and see black silk.
A blindfold.
“Open your mouth,” you say.
A piece of warm biscuit on my lips, my tongue.
I chew slowly, tasting it.
Dribbles of butter on my lips, my chin.
I lick them off.
Your finger, dipped in jelly.
Grape jelly, you pull your finger back out.
Another finger. Strawberry. Blackberry.
Another piece of biscuit.
Then, a dribble of gravy.
HOT! It’s hot!
You dribble it down my chin, my neck, my chest. Burning.
I tug at the ropes, as you laugh.
Indispensible
The cemeteries are full of indispensable men, said De Gaulle.
And from the looks of things, we desperately need the services of indispensable men.
So, each of you grab a shovel and start digging. I’ll prepare the lab and a batch of the special revival serum. We’ll have an army of indispensable men by sunrise.
This isn’t to say that you’re indispensable. I mean, I couldn’t do this project without you.
Although, if you gave me enough time, I could dig up these men and revive them myself, but it would take much, much longer.
You know what I mean.
Bees in Space
Scientists at NASA wanted to send bees up in a rocket to the space station.
They wanted to see how bees would react to zero-gravity conditions.
Would their honeycombs change their geometry from series of hexagons to some weird, alien topography?
Would their social structure change, where the drones and soldiers ruled over the queen?
So, the rocket went up, and the bees were transferred into the cargo bay.
They escaped, and stung the shit out of everyone on the space station.
Thankfully, none of the crew were allergic, but there were a lot more volunteers for routine maintenance spacewalks.
Gene Pool
Scientists talk about the gene pool.
But they don’t talk about the lifeguard at the gene pool.
Or how much it costs to hire a gene pool cleaning service.
They come out and skim the dead leaves from the gene pool, and maintain the chemicals so that the water is clean and doesn’t burn your eyes when you swim.
The university can’t always afford all those extra costs, so they tend to call it a “gene fountain” or “gene koi pond.”
And they tell their staff and visitors not to swim in it.
Scientists have the most boring pool parties.