When things are slow at work, my coworkers chit-chat about online shoe deals.
To drown out the noise, I put on my headphones and watch webinars and online university courses about writing.
Recently, I needed to buy shoes, so I went to Academy for my New Balance 659’s in size nine and a half.
There was one box of them at the store.
I opened it. It contained two worn-out sneakers.
Some asshole had worn and walked out that pair.
So, I went to Amazon and bought the pair.
It was cheaper and easier.
And the cats got two boxes.
The Last Meal
I have fond memories of eating grilled cheese sandwiches with tomato soup.
Mom used to make that for me after school. Or when I wasn’t feeling well.
Sure, it was just Wonder bread, Kraft american cheese, and Campbell’s tomato soup, but how those came together, it was magic.
So, when the warden asked me what I wanted for my last meal, that’s what I asked for.
And my mother brought it to me.
“Thank you, Mom,” I said for the last time, weeping.
And it was delicious. So delicious.
But not as delicious as when I killed and ate her.
My future self
My future self sits across from me, in the restaurant booth we agreed to meet in.
He had a gun, and I had a gun.
I had paradox on my side. If he shot me, he’d be shooting himself.
But if I shot him, I never would allow myself to accept this meeting, and another paradox would occur.
So, the guns remain undrawn.
He told me what I needed to know, and left.
His suit looked nice. And the looked good for his age.
I looked at the list of investments, called up my stock app, and began to buy.
Chasing a ghost
It has been five months.
I am haunted. I cannot let go.
When I walk outside, I look for you.
Around corners. Under bushes. Along the fence.
You’re not there. You’re never there.
I search the pet rescue sites, chasing your ghost.
Every black cat, young or old. It doesn’t matter.
No, this one is a kitten.
No, this one has green eyes.
No.
I will never find you, because you’re not out there.
Gone is gone. And nothing will change that.
But I will keep looking.
And I will keep searching.
Because I am haunted, and cannot let go.
Succubus Club
Victorian London.
Carriages, top hats, gaslamps, and cobblestone streets.
Every Saturday, The Succubus Club gathers together.
The valet takes their canes and topcoats, and guides them…
To the study.
To the staircase.
To the cellar.
She is waiting there.
Over the centuries, she has survived.
She is the last of her kind.
Her sisters, loving one after another.
Leaving a trail to follow.
Discovered, hunted down, burned.
Unlike them, she loves many.
And they all love her. And protect her. And hide her.
The mayor arrives. The chief of police.
Captains of industry.
And they are so very happy together.
Run on time
They say that Mussolini made the trains run on time.
Yes, it’s true. But not in the way you think.
Because coal, diesel, and wood were needed for the war effort, Mussolini hired physicist Enrico Fermi to build a train with an engine fueled by time.
Fermi worked day and night on the project until it was ready.
Mussolini was delighted… until he learned that Fermi’s wife was a Jew.
The Fermis fled Rome on the train, arriving in America.
Enrico worked on the Manhattan Project, thinking he was building another train.
He was just as surprised as the Japanese.
Weekly Challenge #586 – CREEPY
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:
JEFFREY
Barnacles
by Jeffrey Fischer
I looked at polo shirts on the Brooks Brothers web site. The shirts came in a myriad of colors but the prices required a second mortgage for a fistful of cloth. Reluctantly, I closed the window.
Later, as I opened a blog entry on the mating habits of arachnids – hey, it’s a long-standing passion – I saw an ad in the middle of the page, for none other than Brooks Brothers polo shirts. The same thing happened when I browsed for fountain pens and later read a lengthy piece on cross-dressing anarchists – NOT a passion, mind you, but broadening one’s horizons never hurts.
No, those barnacle ads are not creepy at all.
RICHARD
Creepy
It’s a little known fact that there were, in the beginning, eight dwarves sharing that cottage with Snow White.
Along with Sneezy, Dopey, Bashful, Doc and the others was another dwarf who was always a bit of an embarrassment – he was the really ugly one whose appearance made children cry and grown men cross to the other side of the street.
Which is precisely why Disney wrote Creepy completely out of the story, and nobody has ever seen him since.
But actually, he’s been doing rather well for himself.
Ever since he sealed a publishing deal with Stephen King!
CHARLIE
Nina Titwash was creepy. A lazy eyed, spongy gummed grandmother; she worked on Maggie’s Lunch Wagon on the West side. She’d sneeze and cough, light up another Camel, and throw Elk Burgers on the Grill.
She’d wash her hands once a day, but only incidentally if she got something icky on them when reaching into the back of the wagon’s reefer.
Titwash was a native Texan. Her family lived off things they drug out of the city dump. One day, her dad found a duffle bag full of money, and moved out, abandoning the family and its secrets and crimes.
2.
Romy Wovencrotch was a Seattle hippy. He spent an hour each morning doing his hair, tweezing his eyebrows, and putting on wristbands, analog watches, silver rings and ear jewelry.
The creepiest of creeps, he creeped around coffee bars, bicycle shops, Thai restaurants, and music venues. He was a picker of pockets and picked the pocket of pocked marked procurer at the produce market. He was caught, shaved head to toe, dipped in plaster, and planted puss down in a pig pen at the wildlife zoo, North of town.
He was found a month later, half eaten by the big sow.
JON
Something Creepy
By
Jon DeCles
There’s something sexy about something creepy. The frisson is not about something you should not do, it is about something you don’t want to do: only you do. The way your skin crawls at the guy in the Clive Barker movie where he is re-assembling without his skin, only you can feel why the girl is turned on.
There is also something erotic about fear, about surprise. The feeling that something could happen out of your control. Women and men both have rape fantasies, but almost nobody really wants to be raped.
Thus the ticket taker in the mirror maze.
TOM
Some People; You just Can’t Please.
“Smile!” I don’t like to smile, especially for someone trying to steal my soul for a momentarily tourist capture the moment as staged as the last 20 WrestleMania; and if I had a folding metal chair then I would be smiling for real. “No wider.” So I raise up my best 4th Grade Photo Day Smile. You know the one your parents show to perspective girlfriends “OOOOO that’s so creepy.” Not as creepy as what I am about to do with that camera of yours. “So serious.” I ponder how long it will take to find the body. Hope they take photos.
TURA
Creepy
———
“The first card represents the present,” said the fortune-teller. “The Astrogator, spying out the future.”
Well, no-brainer, here I was consulting her.
“The second is the immediate past. The Knight of Batons, reversed. A soldier defeated.”
A reference to my ignominious exit from my last assassination mission? The soothsayer continued.
“Then the three futures. 16 of Tentacles. Entrapment without escape. This is the best future.”
This was getting seriously creepy. I decided to postpone my current mission until the stars were once again right. But first, I shot the fortune-teller. One can’t be too careful in this line of work.
SERENDIPITY
People seem to think I’m creepy…
You could put it down to my fascination with blood and gore, or my fondness for stories of murder and mayhem.
Perhaps my unhealthy obsession with knives and the darker side of the soul causes them to wonder about my motives.
Or maybe, it’s just that I come across as something of a psychopath?
But, I don’t think that it’s really any of those things.
What really freaks people out, is that they’ve never heard my real voice, or seen my face… You have absolutely no idea who I really am.
And that’s creepy!
LIZZIE
She just waited there, wearing this huge hat while sitting between the over-sized figures of Death and a Bride.
The display was a performance, they said. All she had to do was sit down and be quiet. And that’s what she did. Well, at least until Death started coughing.
She stood up and peeked in through the eyes of Death, wondering if anyone was inside.
“Are you OK?”
To which Death replied, amidst intense coughing, “Help me.”
Everyone fled. Too creepy, the critics wrote.
Apparently, Death had planned to rob the jewelry-clad celebrities attending the opening, and Death almost died.
LAIEANNA
“Creepshow”
Shooting, stabbing, even setting fire -which almost burned down my
house- did nothing to eliminate the hideous creature dwelling inside.
I tried humane methods first, but authorities couldn’t see it and I
got fined for false calls. Invisible when attempting to evict and
invincible when trying to kill, if left alone, friends saw the
monstrosity.
I didn’t need to tend to it, but I couldn’t ignore it. So, I did the
next best thing and made a spectacle of it. You want to see something
unnatural and creepy? Ten dollars will get you a ticket for a half
hour viewing.
LILITH
She awoke in the bedroom to the sound of the bathtub faucet shutting off.
The bathroom had been dimmed and filled with flickering tea light
candles. Lavender and chamomile aromas were swept up with the
spiraling steam from the bubble bath. The tub was empty. She smiled.
Her husband called for her. “You home, babe?”
“Upstairs,” she called back, lowering herself into the bath. She so
felt sleepy as her head sank below the water. Blood swirled up from
her wrists.
He screamed her name when he saw her.
She awoke to the sound of the bathtub faucet shutting off.
NORVAL JOE
Back in my neighborhood, when I was a kid, no one ever invited Wendell along, but he always showed up anyway. No one cared.
He wore a cereal bowl haircut and didn’t seem to have any neck at all.
He never said anything. He just nodded his head in agreement to whatever I said and smiled his creepy smile.
He must have moved away. I never saw him after eighth grade.
At my twenty-fifth high school reunion I asked around among my old friends if anyone knew what had happened to him.
Funny. No one else remembered him at all.
PLANET Z
I named my first cat Mister Creepy.
His grey fur stuck out in all directions.
And his tail was a bent shock of fluff.
His claws were almost always out, gripping the carpet for dear life.
And his yellow eyes, as wide as can be.
He never walked anywhere. He always ran at full speed.
There were times that he jumped up on shelves and the tops of dressers.
Staring down at me, hissing and shrieking.
One day, I left the door open too long, and he escaped.
Crazy bastard never came back.
It was a relief to us all.
The unholy disease
An earthquake hit Nepal.
Over two thousand people died.
Two dozen of them were Israeli tourists.
Muslim preachers celebrated their deaths, calling it a sign of Allah’s will.
Nobody condemned them for it. Or asked them if Allah wanted dead Jews, he would have sent the earthquake to Israel.
Or, for that matter, just caused each and every Jew to drop dead where they stood.
While Israelis sent aid to the victims of the earthquake.
The preachers collected money for weapons to fight “The resistance.”
When your religion promotes death, it ceases to be a religion.
It becomes a disease.
Round up
Ned was obsessive with round numbers. He hated anything that didn’t end in a zero.
So, his wife Molly set up ten savings accounts.
Each earned a pittance in interest, but the balances weren’t round. That drove Ned bonkers.
So, he added money to each until they had nice round numbers again.
Every month, the interest messed up the balances, and Ned kept adding more.
For years, he did this, until the day he died.
Ned’s funeral ate up all of the savings.
Which left Molly with the life insurance.
She ran off with a young stud.
Who hated math.
Nothing lasts
Nothing we write will last.
Even if we etch our words in stone, stone wears down in time.
We may as well scratch our words into our skin.
And show off scars.
Language changes over the centuries.
Sometimes, overnight.
New words appear, and others fade from use.
Stars themselves burn out.
And nothing remains in the ever-expanding universe but heat.
With nothing to experience the words, and nothing to remember them, why worry at all?
Let your words be like the candle’s flame.
Rising up into the air, a trail of smoke, and then it vanishes.
Briefly illuminating the darkness.